JayJay Jackson's Blog
January 13, 2019
Work Binge
After another bleak holiday season (though not as bleak as the past two) I'm feeling fed up. Apparently fed up is good for my creativity.
Since the book I launched at the beginning of December made pocket change and I hadn't been paid from freelance clients since November and what was to be a part-time staff position at a publishing startup seems to have dried up and blown away I was feeling money-pinched and hair-teary. Yes, it is a common facet of freelance life, but sometimes it just gets wearying.
After the book launch madness of December, I found myself casting about for possibilities. I decided to revisit one of my previous, moderately successful, efforts at creating passive income. To wit, the custom print-on-demand giant, Zazzle.com.
I've had a "store" on their site for many years and I would upload designs that I thought up or that included my artwork. Over the years the store has made a few thousand dollars, but fairly small in term of monthly amounts. It has slowly tapered off as well so that now I get some minimal payment of $30 or so every couple of months. And yet, I've been distantly aware that there are people who make some considerable income from the site.
I took a look at the products in my store and decided I could do better.
I decided to start with a store for journals and notebooks, something I am fond of, personally. On New Year's Eve, Freddy and I sat around and thought up a four-pages long list of ideas for different types of journals people might want. They range from the common (Baby's First Year, Party Ideas) to the esoteric (A Movie Quotes journal and Past Life Regression diary). That list got me so fired up I reluctantly tore myself away to go to a party our friends were throwing.
But on New Year's day (NOT bright and early) I got started on journal designs. Today is two weeks later and truthfully, it's a bit of a fog. I've been working absurdly long hours and sleeping at weird times, absorbed into some sort of creative miasma. But today I counted and I've created 65 designs and put them on around 400 products. Many are journals, but I branched out to quite a few other things as well. (Tangents are a problem for me.)
I did it and I'm still a bit stunned. And unsure how.
To be fair, many of the designs were assembled from stock art parts, but a number are original. I'll never be able to keep up this pace (and live) but if I even do a fraction of the work I should be able to create several thousand products and make them available in a few months. I'm creating multiple stores to differentiate themes.
I've got the quantity working, but how about the quality you say? Judge for yourself. here are some of the fruits of my work binge:
Journals for Life
https://www.zazzle.com/journals_for_life
Country Flower Shop
https://www.zazzle.com/country_flower_shop
A Passion for Books
https://www.zazzle.com/a_passion_for_books
And my old store (which I've added to) JayJay Jackson
https://www.zazzle.com/jayjayjackson
Some of the Journals:
Since the book I launched at the beginning of December made pocket change and I hadn't been paid from freelance clients since November and what was to be a part-time staff position at a publishing startup seems to have dried up and blown away I was feeling money-pinched and hair-teary. Yes, it is a common facet of freelance life, but sometimes it just gets wearying.
After the book launch madness of December, I found myself casting about for possibilities. I decided to revisit one of my previous, moderately successful, efforts at creating passive income. To wit, the custom print-on-demand giant, Zazzle.com.
I've had a "store" on their site for many years and I would upload designs that I thought up or that included my artwork. Over the years the store has made a few thousand dollars, but fairly small in term of monthly amounts. It has slowly tapered off as well so that now I get some minimal payment of $30 or so every couple of months. And yet, I've been distantly aware that there are people who make some considerable income from the site.
I took a look at the products in my store and decided I could do better.
I decided to start with a store for journals and notebooks, something I am fond of, personally. On New Year's Eve, Freddy and I sat around and thought up a four-pages long list of ideas for different types of journals people might want. They range from the common (Baby's First Year, Party Ideas) to the esoteric (A Movie Quotes journal and Past Life Regression diary). That list got me so fired up I reluctantly tore myself away to go to a party our friends were throwing.
But on New Year's day (NOT bright and early) I got started on journal designs. Today is two weeks later and truthfully, it's a bit of a fog. I've been working absurdly long hours and sleeping at weird times, absorbed into some sort of creative miasma. But today I counted and I've created 65 designs and put them on around 400 products. Many are journals, but I branched out to quite a few other things as well. (Tangents are a problem for me.)
I did it and I'm still a bit stunned. And unsure how.
To be fair, many of the designs were assembled from stock art parts, but a number are original. I'll never be able to keep up this pace (and live) but if I even do a fraction of the work I should be able to create several thousand products and make them available in a few months. I'm creating multiple stores to differentiate themes.
I've got the quantity working, but how about the quality you say? Judge for yourself. here are some of the fruits of my work binge:
Journals for Life
https://www.zazzle.com/journals_for_life
Country Flower Shop
https://www.zazzle.com/country_flower_shop
A Passion for Books
https://www.zazzle.com/a_passion_for_books
And my old store (which I've added to) JayJay Jackson
https://www.zazzle.com/jayjayjackson
Some of the Journals:
September 24, 2016
Steve Ditko is Defiant
The story of my life in the comics business is full of dramas, big and small. Full-blown dramas with good guys and evil doers and innocent victims. Steve Ditko, in particular, is quite a mysterious and legendary figure in our culture. His high-profile accomplishments, such as co-creating Spider-Man and Dr Strange, and his staunch adherence to his principles have made him a figure that people are curious to know more about. Steve Ditko utterly resists this, remaining a very elusive figure. I’ve worked with him at two comic book companies, VALIANT and Defiant. My contact with him was limited but memorable. Mr. Ditko is a uniquely unforgettable man.
One day Steve Ditko came to the Defiant Comics office to quit.
A bit of background: Defiant was a comic book publishing company that Jim Shooter, former editor in chief of Marvel, started after his first independent company, VALIANT, was stolen by his crooked partner and the venture capital investor he married. As soon as he could Jim started creating comics again founding a new company called Defiant. Defiant was funded by a company called The River Group, a trading card company. As a trading card company and strategic partner they wanted us to do trading cards along with the comics. Jim came up with the concept of doing a comic book preview issue as trading cards. The card set would be the first issue, or the #0 issue of the comic book series.
Defiant was all of us getting back up on the VALIANT horse that had thrown us, but Jim especially. He’d put his heart and soul and every minute of every day of his time for over three years into creating VALIANT Comics. He ruined his health, sacrificed everything and when it began to experience success, it was stolen from him by thieves. Jim is the most Daruma-like individual I’ve ever met. He never gives up and no matter how many times he falls he just keeps on getting up again. One of his sayings is: “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.” Ain’t that the truth.
Jim’s motivation in starting the many companies he did was always multi-layered. At the top of his priorities was a desire to employ people who current trends in the industry may have neglected or dismissed. Steve Ditko has a set of standards that dictate, and limit, what projects he is willing to work on. Jim had made a point of trying to find something that Steve Ditko would be willing to draw at VALIANT. He found his opening when we did WWF comics and Steve Ditko drew some of the stories for our short-lived WWF Superstars magazine.
Jim liked and admired Steve, I think as much for his commitment to personal principles as for his contributions to the comics industry. Steve Ditko is a legend who has contributed mightily to what we know as comics today. And Mr Ditko is likewise well-known for his fervent commitment to his personal philosophy and his devout sense of right and wrong. I think anyone who has read his self-published work realizes that.
As Jim put it on his blog, “Giving Steve work is easier said than done. He’s very particular about what he will and won’t do. He wouldn’t consider anything to do with Spider-Man or Doctor Strange, for instance. He refused to work on any books with “flawed” heroes. He had a pretty strict definition of “hero.” Per him, the character isn’t a hero if he or she is flawed.”
So Jim created a comic especially for Steve––Dark Dominion. (My small contribution was the title, which was inspired by a fancy gated community near my home town in Texas where George Straight is rumored to live) The character and premise was intended to incorporate Steve’s beliefs and philosophy. The protagonist was even a strong-minded older man who lived in Manhattan. Jim was convinced that it would be the perfect vehicle to express Steve’s talents and return him to the position of respect that he deserves. Jim was also completely and unfortunately wrong.
Steve came in to tell Jim that he was quitting the book and that it was because Jim had completely misconstrued Steve’s philosophy and his principles. Jim argued, shocked at the turn of events. Jim is not only well-read, he did specific research into the works Steve often sites as being his own sources in order to create Dark Dominion. Jim pressed Steve for a clear explanation. What it seemed to boil down to was that Steve felt Jim had based the story on Plato’s philosophical principles. Steve stood firmly with Aristotle in the philosophy camp and felt the two were mutually incompatible.
As Jim put it in an interview: “When I went to DEFIANT I asked him to describe to me the perfect kind of character. I thought I created that when I did the Dark Dominion thing and he agreed to draw it and he got about halfway into it and he came in and dropped it on my desk and said, "I can't do this." I said, "Why not?" He said "It's Platonic, and I am a Aristotelian." I said, "What?" He had to explain that one to me and he said, "Well, Plato thought there was the real world and then this invisible world and I'm Aristotelian—I believe that what you see is what you get. That's all there is. Reality. This story has a substratum world and I'm not drawing it."
I know that sounds odd. But like many things, once you understand them they become clear. Steve himself expressed his point of view in a 1989 documentary:
“History tells how men did act, art shows how men could and should act…A hero is a man admired for his qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. Aristotle formulated the Law of Identity. A id A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. The truth cannot contradict itself and also be a lie…Today’s flawed superheroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength. Rich in super powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers…It is like creating a perfectly physical adult with the reasoning limits of a six year old…If it is impossible to know what is true and to know what is right then the flaw, the worst will be the new standard of good. Man will be defined as a flawed, anti-rational animal and all that corrupts and harms life will be the new virtues.” (* There’s a slightly more complete transcription below.)
I have a life-long interest in Greek and Roman history and mythology. I had read most of Ayn Rand’s work and it just so happened that at that time I had recently been reading a book about Aristotle that went into great detail about his mentor and teacher, Plato. I admit I felt rather unqualified to debate fine points of Greek philosophy but I also felt duty-bound to clarify our position to Steve. And while I agree with some of his opinions, up to a point, so I also wanted to understand his position in quitting the job. Unfinished. Which was frankly upsetting since our fledgling company had a lot riding on the project.
I asked him if we could speak in the “conference room,” a cramped office in back into which we had wedged a smallish round table and three chairs. I led the way and squeezed into the back chair. We proceeded to debate our positions. This went infer some time with both of us firm in our points of view and neither of us giving way, but becoming increasingly intense. Grey Williamson was there that day, sitting in the bullpen area outside and he joked that the two of us created a vortex that began sucking in all of the energy around it.
One funny thing, while we were speaking I kept almost losing my train of thought because (and you may not know this, I didn’t until that day) Steve Ditko does the same hand gestures he draws! You know the classic hand gesture with the two middle fingers bent down and the others splayed out. He does that. As a perfectly natural and unaffected gesture.
Holy shit! That’s so cool.
Without the flaming head this could totally be Steve Ditko.
I persisted in trying to convince him that Dark Dominion was an opportunity to express himself and was created to be a vehicle for his ideals. He was not buying what I was selling.
Never try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Often our elders know a heck of a lot more than we do and they’ve been thinking about t stuff a lot longer. In Steve’s case he has an absolute certainty in his beliefs and his understanding of the texts that have inspired them. My poor powers of rationality were insufficient to the task of convincing him to continue working for us. I did manage to argue him into finishing the preview, though. I suppose that’s something.
One thing that impressed me then, and now, is that as intense as our debate became––and it was intense, that comic book and Steve were important to how Jim had pitched our company to the investor––but our argument never became personal or devolved into anger. Steve is a man with rather courtly, old-world manners and also someone who inspires respect. Debate seems to be a form of argument that is all but lost in these days of internet flame wars but Steve comes from another era.
In the end Mr. Ditko proved to be the immoveable object. The whole situation still makes me very sad. Sad for Jim’s disappointment in failing to help Steve, sad for our loss as a company and how it made our investors lose some of their confidence in us. And sad to not get to see Steve Ditko draw a comic under the Defiant Comics banner. It just would have been so cool.
• • •
* Here is the quote from the documentary with Steve in a more expanded transcription that I typed off the documentary clip on YouTube:
In a 1989 documentary Steve Ditko said, “Mr A is based on Ayn Rand’s theory of justice, on Aristotle’s law of identity, his definition of man and his view of art. Aristotle said that art is philosophically more important than history. History tells how men did act, art shows how men could and should act. Art creates a model, an ideal man as a measuring standard. Without a measuring standard nothing can be identified or judged but everything can be measured. Disease and sicknesses are measured by a healthy organ or body. All measurement requires an appropriate standard. With it one can measure down to atoms, up to the stars and the changes in the character of a man. Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. Rationality is a potential that has to be actualized by choice and the right thinking method of logic applied to reason. The standard of measurement for all is a rational, logical ruler. It objectively measures the rational and irrational thinking. A hero measures a man at his best in the worst situations. A hero is a man admired for his qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. Aristotle formulated the Law of Identify. A id A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. The truth cannot contradict itself and also be a lie. Mr A’s black and white card symbolizes the Law of Identity. It identifies the two moral potentials possible, the good and the evil and by one’s chosen action the best or the worst can be actualized. The card is also a symbol of justice. For Ayn Rand, justice is objectively identifying a thing for what it is and treating it accordingly. No one gets the unearned. The innocent is not penalized, the guilty is not rewarded. The card is a refusal to violate the root of justice, the law of identity, by a gray compromise. A refusal to sacrifice the good to the evil or to accept any part of the evil as a greater good.
...A hero is a model for everyone, but not everyone is willing to act at his best. A less demanding model, blending good and bad is more comforting, easier to accept. For the self-flawed an anti-hero provides a heroic label without the need to act better.
...The perfect is identified and measured by what is possible to man. A perfect bowling score. A perfect response accepts the truth and rejects the lie. The perfect hero on principle says yes to a true identity and no to a contradictory one. Ruled by justice he treats every identity as it deserves. He is the actualized potential for good in its purest form. A true moral measuring ruler. He is the most human and deserving of respect. Today’s flawed super-heroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength. Rich in super powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers. They are perfect in overcoming the flawed super villains, saving the world, the universe, yet helpless to solve their common, ordinary, average personal problems. It is like creating a perfectly physical adult with the reasoning limits of a six year old.
... If it is impossible to know what is true and to know what is right then the flaw, the worst will be the new standard of good. Man will be defined as a flawed, anti-rational animal and all that corrupts and harms life will be the new virtues. Like deliberately flawed eyesight where sub-blindness is the ideal anti-life behavior will be the standard for living. The resentment against the perfect hero is a resentment against A id A, against the integration of truth and behavior, against the non-contradictory identity of a moral ideal, against reality and life’s measuring ruler, a rational moral standard.
One day Steve Ditko came to the Defiant Comics office to quit.
A bit of background: Defiant was a comic book publishing company that Jim Shooter, former editor in chief of Marvel, started after his first independent company, VALIANT, was stolen by his crooked partner and the venture capital investor he married. As soon as he could Jim started creating comics again founding a new company called Defiant. Defiant was funded by a company called The River Group, a trading card company. As a trading card company and strategic partner they wanted us to do trading cards along with the comics. Jim came up with the concept of doing a comic book preview issue as trading cards. The card set would be the first issue, or the #0 issue of the comic book series.
Defiant was all of us getting back up on the VALIANT horse that had thrown us, but Jim especially. He’d put his heart and soul and every minute of every day of his time for over three years into creating VALIANT Comics. He ruined his health, sacrificed everything and when it began to experience success, it was stolen from him by thieves. Jim is the most Daruma-like individual I’ve ever met. He never gives up and no matter how many times he falls he just keeps on getting up again. One of his sayings is: “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.” Ain’t that the truth.
Jim’s motivation in starting the many companies he did was always multi-layered. At the top of his priorities was a desire to employ people who current trends in the industry may have neglected or dismissed. Steve Ditko has a set of standards that dictate, and limit, what projects he is willing to work on. Jim had made a point of trying to find something that Steve Ditko would be willing to draw at VALIANT. He found his opening when we did WWF comics and Steve Ditko drew some of the stories for our short-lived WWF Superstars magazine.
Jim liked and admired Steve, I think as much for his commitment to personal principles as for his contributions to the comics industry. Steve Ditko is a legend who has contributed mightily to what we know as comics today. And Mr Ditko is likewise well-known for his fervent commitment to his personal philosophy and his devout sense of right and wrong. I think anyone who has read his self-published work realizes that.
As Jim put it on his blog, “Giving Steve work is easier said than done. He’s very particular about what he will and won’t do. He wouldn’t consider anything to do with Spider-Man or Doctor Strange, for instance. He refused to work on any books with “flawed” heroes. He had a pretty strict definition of “hero.” Per him, the character isn’t a hero if he or she is flawed.”
So Jim created a comic especially for Steve––Dark Dominion. (My small contribution was the title, which was inspired by a fancy gated community near my home town in Texas where George Straight is rumored to live) The character and premise was intended to incorporate Steve’s beliefs and philosophy. The protagonist was even a strong-minded older man who lived in Manhattan. Jim was convinced that it would be the perfect vehicle to express Steve’s talents and return him to the position of respect that he deserves. Jim was also completely and unfortunately wrong.
Steve came in to tell Jim that he was quitting the book and that it was because Jim had completely misconstrued Steve’s philosophy and his principles. Jim argued, shocked at the turn of events. Jim is not only well-read, he did specific research into the works Steve often sites as being his own sources in order to create Dark Dominion. Jim pressed Steve for a clear explanation. What it seemed to boil down to was that Steve felt Jim had based the story on Plato’s philosophical principles. Steve stood firmly with Aristotle in the philosophy camp and felt the two were mutually incompatible.
As Jim put it in an interview: “When I went to DEFIANT I asked him to describe to me the perfect kind of character. I thought I created that when I did the Dark Dominion thing and he agreed to draw it and he got about halfway into it and he came in and dropped it on my desk and said, "I can't do this." I said, "Why not?" He said "It's Platonic, and I am a Aristotelian." I said, "What?" He had to explain that one to me and he said, "Well, Plato thought there was the real world and then this invisible world and I'm Aristotelian—I believe that what you see is what you get. That's all there is. Reality. This story has a substratum world and I'm not drawing it."
I know that sounds odd. But like many things, once you understand them they become clear. Steve himself expressed his point of view in a 1989 documentary:
“History tells how men did act, art shows how men could and should act…A hero is a man admired for his qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. Aristotle formulated the Law of Identity. A id A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. The truth cannot contradict itself and also be a lie…Today’s flawed superheroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength. Rich in super powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers…It is like creating a perfectly physical adult with the reasoning limits of a six year old…If it is impossible to know what is true and to know what is right then the flaw, the worst will be the new standard of good. Man will be defined as a flawed, anti-rational animal and all that corrupts and harms life will be the new virtues.” (* There’s a slightly more complete transcription below.)
I have a life-long interest in Greek and Roman history and mythology. I had read most of Ayn Rand’s work and it just so happened that at that time I had recently been reading a book about Aristotle that went into great detail about his mentor and teacher, Plato. I admit I felt rather unqualified to debate fine points of Greek philosophy but I also felt duty-bound to clarify our position to Steve. And while I agree with some of his opinions, up to a point, so I also wanted to understand his position in quitting the job. Unfinished. Which was frankly upsetting since our fledgling company had a lot riding on the project.
I asked him if we could speak in the “conference room,” a cramped office in back into which we had wedged a smallish round table and three chairs. I led the way and squeezed into the back chair. We proceeded to debate our positions. This went infer some time with both of us firm in our points of view and neither of us giving way, but becoming increasingly intense. Grey Williamson was there that day, sitting in the bullpen area outside and he joked that the two of us created a vortex that began sucking in all of the energy around it.
One funny thing, while we were speaking I kept almost losing my train of thought because (and you may not know this, I didn’t until that day) Steve Ditko does the same hand gestures he draws! You know the classic hand gesture with the two middle fingers bent down and the others splayed out. He does that. As a perfectly natural and unaffected gesture.
Holy shit! That’s so cool.
Without the flaming head this could totally be Steve Ditko.I persisted in trying to convince him that Dark Dominion was an opportunity to express himself and was created to be a vehicle for his ideals. He was not buying what I was selling.
Never try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Often our elders know a heck of a lot more than we do and they’ve been thinking about t stuff a lot longer. In Steve’s case he has an absolute certainty in his beliefs and his understanding of the texts that have inspired them. My poor powers of rationality were insufficient to the task of convincing him to continue working for us. I did manage to argue him into finishing the preview, though. I suppose that’s something.
One thing that impressed me then, and now, is that as intense as our debate became––and it was intense, that comic book and Steve were important to how Jim had pitched our company to the investor––but our argument never became personal or devolved into anger. Steve is a man with rather courtly, old-world manners and also someone who inspires respect. Debate seems to be a form of argument that is all but lost in these days of internet flame wars but Steve comes from another era.
In the end Mr. Ditko proved to be the immoveable object. The whole situation still makes me very sad. Sad for Jim’s disappointment in failing to help Steve, sad for our loss as a company and how it made our investors lose some of their confidence in us. And sad to not get to see Steve Ditko draw a comic under the Defiant Comics banner. It just would have been so cool.
• • •
* Here is the quote from the documentary with Steve in a more expanded transcription that I typed off the documentary clip on YouTube:
In a 1989 documentary Steve Ditko said, “Mr A is based on Ayn Rand’s theory of justice, on Aristotle’s law of identity, his definition of man and his view of art. Aristotle said that art is philosophically more important than history. History tells how men did act, art shows how men could and should act. Art creates a model, an ideal man as a measuring standard. Without a measuring standard nothing can be identified or judged but everything can be measured. Disease and sicknesses are measured by a healthy organ or body. All measurement requires an appropriate standard. With it one can measure down to atoms, up to the stars and the changes in the character of a man. Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. Rationality is a potential that has to be actualized by choice and the right thinking method of logic applied to reason. The standard of measurement for all is a rational, logical ruler. It objectively measures the rational and irrational thinking. A hero measures a man at his best in the worst situations. A hero is a man admired for his qualities or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. Aristotle formulated the Law of Identify. A id A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. The truth cannot contradict itself and also be a lie. Mr A’s black and white card symbolizes the Law of Identity. It identifies the two moral potentials possible, the good and the evil and by one’s chosen action the best or the worst can be actualized. The card is also a symbol of justice. For Ayn Rand, justice is objectively identifying a thing for what it is and treating it accordingly. No one gets the unearned. The innocent is not penalized, the guilty is not rewarded. The card is a refusal to violate the root of justice, the law of identity, by a gray compromise. A refusal to sacrifice the good to the evil or to accept any part of the evil as a greater good.
...A hero is a model for everyone, but not everyone is willing to act at his best. A less demanding model, blending good and bad is more comforting, easier to accept. For the self-flawed an anti-hero provides a heroic label without the need to act better.
...The perfect is identified and measured by what is possible to man. A perfect bowling score. A perfect response accepts the truth and rejects the lie. The perfect hero on principle says yes to a true identity and no to a contradictory one. Ruled by justice he treats every identity as it deserves. He is the actualized potential for good in its purest form. A true moral measuring ruler. He is the most human and deserving of respect. Today’s flawed super-heroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength. Rich in super powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers. They are perfect in overcoming the flawed super villains, saving the world, the universe, yet helpless to solve their common, ordinary, average personal problems. It is like creating a perfectly physical adult with the reasoning limits of a six year old.
... If it is impossible to know what is true and to know what is right then the flaw, the worst will be the new standard of good. Man will be defined as a flawed, anti-rational animal and all that corrupts and harms life will be the new virtues. Like deliberately flawed eyesight where sub-blindness is the ideal anti-life behavior will be the standard for living. The resentment against the perfect hero is a resentment against A id A, against the integration of truth and behavior, against the non-contradictory identity of a moral ideal, against reality and life’s measuring ruler, a rational moral standard.
March 23, 2016
lost children of the city
A friend of mine is a very talented, prestigious-award-winning writer who's been struggling with some challenging life difficulties. I've been encouraging him to write more, somewhat unsuccessfully, but he sent me a couple of snippets that I edited, rearranged and expanded upon. It's unfinished, but I'm throwing it out here anyway. I'm not sure it's the type of thing that even needs to be finished to be enjoyed. See if it interests you. I think it's very evocative.
lost children of the city
light.
The past seems to loom large in my thoughts making the present insignificant. Sometimes I think I’m stuck, trapped forever in an eternity of age seventeen, not quite a man nor a boy but wanting to be both. Or neither.
These days when I get out at Brooklyn’s 95th street station I see only ghosts. A creeping shadow of my grandmother pushing a cart full of groceries; a hazy image of grandpa parking a decayed Cadillac the color of worn brown leather.
Even now, as my eyes half-close on a summer evening, I can see fireflies dance through the darkness in the park at the base of the Verrazano. In a life long lost, I grasped at the flitting sparks while my grandfather sat nearby on a bench reading a newspaper in the fading light.
I'm tempted to go to their old apartment and ring the bell, but I'm afraid of who might open the door; of what might be there. In my imagination the walls are now painted black and a hunched figure sits in a corner shrouded in shadow eating burnt pieces of toast.
How can anyone ever live there? How could someone ever thrive beneath a ceiling soaked through with someone else's memories? The city is steeped in insignificant, vital histories melding with new ones like layers of paint that chip and wear thin in spots. The images of the past wavering in the umbra, lost but never gone.
For a while my grandfather had a bad habit of stumbling into the night in an Alzheimer's daze and getting lost amidst the streets. The phone would ring at 3 AM and I would hear my grandmother whisper over the open line that he's gone––the door wide open and only a stale draft blowing in his wake.
Once, in a moment of lucidity, he spoke about trying to find the old shop where his father had worked. I'm unsure if it ever existed at all. There were rumors that he labored in a toothpaste factory, screwing the caps onto the tubes. Something about that story resonated….how humble can someone be? I search for this imagined store endlessly, rewinding dreams and conversations I had with my grandfather for any clue as to where the trail might end. But it’s gone, if it ever existed, lost to time like some doomed shoe shop straddling the edge of Atlantis--ready to vanish into legend.
So tired. Battered and broken, feeling the brunt of the years like a thousand blows. Weary beyond words. Memories chase me like children from the outer boroughs. They start as shadows across the street in the park…dark outlines, barely visible against a cracking wall. Blades glint in the blackness and I watch the reflection of street lamps slide down the sides of daggers. They pull bats from folds in the night, planks of wood studded with nails to beat all my aspirations, my energy into a dull misery whose weight bows my body into a question mark of sorrow.
Flashes of memory float like those long-dead fireflies. I can remember the light. A pink glow from a sunset that settled like a rotten grapefruit over New Jersey and painted my Manhattan bedroom walls with a coral glow. Always the west side of NYC, the Hudson, and Jersey looming on the horizon like the apocalypse. Always the colors that made me weak. Pastels and diluted blues. A palette of watercolor in the sky overlooking a bedroom that fills with the colors of a drenched world I remember the dreams and my room filled with fire.
There is a monster locked in a room. More of a juggernaut that thrashes against some unseen bond. The first time that I dream of something so fantastical I can remember waking in the night and writing it all down in a frantic race against forgetfulness. Alas, some things you never forget…destined to remember the way something that can never be true makes you feel. Endless dreaming. Memories of lives lived and scenes bleached into memory that could never exist. My mind fills with the embrace of sleep and the warm wrap of opiate laced visions.
You miss it more than the real thing. A cold stream. A rotten piece of wood that twists endlessly in upon itself. I see a stream knifing through hills of pine…Pike dance beneath the glacial water. They are there; somewhere beneath…like flecks of moonlight beneath the surface. I see the white truck parked on 12th street….years and time blurred together… a world lined of sheets… daydreams and nights spent awake. Life inverted.
How could it last? When you’re in it you can’t imagine being anywhere else. Its glows only in hindsight. The days that all seem to fall in together and stretch in the wake of the hunger. The hunger. The city through the glass. An apartment in an office building. Family. But always the city. People walking by....the endless march of faces.
The four of us lived together in the West Village. In a small one-bedroom apartment edged too close to the meat markets. It was my mother, myself, her cancer and my addiction. Long, endless nights of orange sodium-vapor luminescence filtering through the blinds like some blazing inferno; the destruction of Pompeii; my whole life turned to ash...thank god she never lived to witness the extent of my ruin.
***
Joan.
I must have stared at her endlessly...all semester long...flowing blond hair and haunted green eyes. She came downtown to visit me once. The screeching A train dropped her off on 14th street and through squinted eyes I searched through the clouds of people...frantic almost...scared that the city might have taken her from me; swallowed her whole--like the infamous story of Etan Patz--vanished from the corner of Prince and W. Broadway---one of the disappeared ones we tried to forget.
She was there though...appeared through the crowded mist of faces...unmistakable against the brooding masses. I always noticed the hair and the eyes....kind of like a Medusa in reverse---stare too long and your heart will burst. Coming from the green pastures of Kentucky by way of the rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue it was surprising how she fit right into the eternal flock of clubbers, ravers, models with legs like stilts; the uncountable cool.
We couldn’t have been more different. I imagined her youth unbounded; endless stretches of green fields, horses unbridled in the distant horizon, half-vacant towns fueled by Friday night football games. As far as possible and as alien a life as I could ever imagine.
But in the hours of midnight we came together...almost like one of those hundred-year storms...an almost impossible confluence of events that resulted in twilit-fueled embraces and frantic kisses that seemed to linger unrestrained into the depths of night... I can remember kissing her in the rain--and the stench of ozone preceding a thunderstorm.
That crystalline evening when the skies grew dark and the sun dropped away below the horizon of New Jersey...storm clouds began to brew over the east-side of the city. We were hanging out the window of my apartment, her hair lashing across my face as the wind carried the smell of an approaching storm.
I did my best to coax her onto the roof beneath a threatening rain. I think she preferred the privacy of my too small room. Beneath the open sky and the endless expanse of the city, I suppose she was wary. Perhaps it was the thunder, maybe the way the clouds appeared ominous in their approach, crawling ever closer.
The black tar was still warm beneath our feet despite the rain. The August heat had soaked in deep enough that she slipped out of her flip-flops and walked over to the old water-tower barefoot, across a surface that seemed to steam as the rain hit. I can remember hesitating in the doorway...dry and safe inside the stairwell with cracking grey paint, watching as she skipped across the puddles.
I never thought I had a chance. I suppose it was the way she glanced into the distance or the slight tension I felt as her hand gripped my shoulder that changed my mind.
She stood beneath the summer showers, peeling her t-shirt off, flinging the soaked white fabric against the ground in a sloppy heap. The shards of broken glass we didn't see on the rusted steps that led up to the water tower; Her hand cut and bleeding a little too much, saying with a vampiric smirk, "Oh it's nothing...c'mere."
The way blood mixes with the taste of sweat. Rivers of red rain running down my chest. The pants I wore ruined with her red hand prints.
Through the veil of years I can still remember how her kisses tasted of blood, of sweat and thunder--how it drew something altogether new and dangerous from within us: It was dangerous love-making; haunting and frenzied and I suppose it left us both a little shaken. I sometimes think it never happened. However, through the veil of years I can never be certain. With astonishing clarity i can still feel the warmth of her skin--glowing white like some ethereal angel that crept from a dream and into my bed. But it was more than enough...our dancing beneath the quilts; kisses that burned through those frigid nights and extinguished with the coming of dawn. I can still see a hazy image of her above me in the half-darkness...blond hair scattering across and along me--even the taste of it....some things are etched forever in your mind; eyes of ocean, a laughter that rung with mirth, her shudder at my freezing hands against the curve of her breast. We did alright I suppose in that tiny cramped room--entangled as we were while outside a grey sky forever wept.
The bed in my apartment had a terrible habit of creaking; of betraying our every secret. As I recall, my mother left us alone...she was still alive then...her body ravaged by cancer...but I suppose she understood. Most probably, she wanted nothing less than to be near the too thin walls and the sound of the two of us leaking through the cracking plaster. We made love in silence--not really though--more like we fumbled feverishly beneath the reflected glare of city lights...pale luminescence filtering through the blinds...strips of light glistening across her naked body...my hands tracing across it all. The widows open, sirens blaring, the hiss of the transvestites across the street; it helped to muffle our cries. Amidst the blue glow I can still see her uncoil from the sheets; shifting ever so slightly beneath the thin streams of light; lips parted delicately; exhaled breaths like a welcoming sigh that decades later still make me shiver.
And so there was before the storm and there was after the storm. There was before that evening on the roof and there was all that came after. I suppose it changed everything. We would never again touch as gently...her fingers would clutch instead of glide; her kisses stronger and more impassioned than before--charged with electricity ever-after. Of course it was too perfect to last.
In the wake of the storm, of the pink fire that burned relentlessly through the night and into my dreams, I woke sober upon a bed of cold sweat and chill that didn't belong. It swept along the wooden floorboards and curled up the side of my bed.
In the end I never did tell her what it all meant to me....in my darkest hours of guilt I suppose her innocence intimidated me. And so I never had the chance to thank her for the myriad kisses; her sharing herself uncommittedly with someone like me...lost as I was during those years of wonder. But I will never forget. And in my deepest slumber I still wake with her taste...
Some secrets should remain kept. Locked away somewhere for all time, a memory too treasured to speak aloud, something altogether majestic. What happened that day still lingers in the back of my mind; Trapped like a caged raven, wings beating against metal; Caught tight, a tickle at the back of the throat that never eases, wanting to be told.
Some memories stand out…they scar you…one time I stumbled onto the subway and ended up sitting next to a what I thought was a woman. It was only when I met her eyes--red rimmed like freshly cut muscle that I realized my mistake. An imperfect echo of a human being who has been broken by pain beyond imagining. Looking into the blackened depths of someone's soul, into the profound depravity that the city can instill in you, I felt like a moth pinned to a card under her shattering glance. Later, years later, I came to understand. The lost children of the city. The disappeared ones.
You never expect the worst, never heed a lifetime's worth of warnings until its too late. The falling towers should have been enough of an omen. The death of my mother a few months later should have sealed the deal...but as it was I was lost to the city--too far gone, beyond repair, my life falling like a comet into the Hudson. I became a lotus-eater, satiated only by vast amounts of opiates, consumed across a wasted decade of indulgence. How hard it is coming to terms with it all, accepting your failures and honoring your defeats.
***
water.
Frankie had a pitbull––technically his uncle’s or cousin’s––some drooling and scarred mass of wrong-wired muscle whose growl was reminiscent of a netherworld beast; foul exhaled breaths of glowing orange embers, brimstone stench and all that...more than enough to put me over the edge into something just short of outright panic even before it bit me.
The night I got bit I was sitting on his couch having stumbled through the projects half-drunk, half-high, hoping to get away from my apartment and the lingering ghosts. Had I been paying more attention i would have noticed the mottled tan and black fur beside me, but as it was my mind was reeling with the death of my mother; the destruction of the towers; the memory of Joan’s hazy outline floating above me in the moonlit darkness.
So I felt more than saw the dog tense, his body tightening and coiling before it lunged through the dim, smoky light, his jaws closing across the right side of my face. I turned fast enough that he failed to grab hold, but too slow to avoid the flash of yellowed teeth that raked down my cheek drawing an uncomfortable amount of blood and a frenzy of startled shouts from across the room.
Just as fast, my friends were there, a flurry of hands grabbing the dog, a loop of bare arm pulling me into the kitchen; Lou shoving a t-shirt with the faded image of Tu-Pac, gold-toothed and smiling, against my face. He wiped at the blood frantically, mumbling, "fuck, fuck, fuck" like he was fighting against time to soak up a spilled glass of red wine before it set in and stained a set of white linens. Not that there was a single set of virgin white linen in the Marlborough projects...
I imagine he was more concerned with the idea of the cops showing up and the ensuing mad dash to hide the undealt bottles of oxycontin and Opana, the 100mcg patches of fentanyl, the endless supply of Xanax bars...stuffed into milk cartons or jammed carefully between stacks of mildewed blankets, often wedged tight between clenched buttocks. A constant running and hiding; an eternal game of cat and mouse played out against the Tactical Narcotics Taskforce.
Once it became clear I wasn't going to bleed out on the linoleum, or go into some late stages of shock, he smiled. He flung the Tu-Pac shirt into the sink, smiled crookedly, and again said, although this time with far less concern and force, "fuck."
On legs that wobbled like creaking and unsteady bamboo I rose and stumbled down the hallway towards the bathroom, grasping the edge of the doorway and turning into a scene of madness thats difficult even now to remember.
Frank and Kareem, crouched over a half-filled bathtub, muscled arms tensed with effort, drowning the heaving dog in twelve inches of brown, rust-colored water. The animal thrashed wildly, water spraying across filthy tiles and browned lines of grout...to say it was quick would be a lie. I don't know how long I stood there in stunned silence watching something akin to atrocity play out before me. I never said a word.
Frank had wanted to drag the beast out to the Marcy projects, muzzled and stuffed into the trunk of his Toyota, to be unleashed at the dog fights that supposedly raged in the abandoned basements of those crippled buildings. I imagine the thing would have done quite well, but it never quite happened. I had tried to help them find a rescue for the dog and short of that at least bring the animal to a vet so that it could be eased into oblivion, but the effort was for naught.
And then it was still. A stillness it could have never known in its short and brutal life. A pathetic waste of an existence drained away with the dirty water. My own was submerged in a muddy soup of Oxys and Xanax. I didn’t even struggle, I just sank.
***
night.
Before the city changed, before that mayor ripped the soul from something profound in both its seediness and wonder, the Meat Markets south of 14th street were rife with the Women of the Night. Their androgynous figures stretched in long ragged lines down the sidewalk. Skin walkers prowling outside as I slept. They seemed unknowable and aggressively other to me.
We all heard stories that they carried razor-blades in their locks of hair. Stare at them too long and the depth of their despair will sink into you. Nothing in the city scared me more. The packs of hoods from the depths of Bed-Stuy were nothing in comparison. I suppose there was something alien, almost sinister to the transvestites that put all sorts of fear into me.
lost children of the city
light.
The past seems to loom large in my thoughts making the present insignificant. Sometimes I think I’m stuck, trapped forever in an eternity of age seventeen, not quite a man nor a boy but wanting to be both. Or neither.
These days when I get out at Brooklyn’s 95th street station I see only ghosts. A creeping shadow of my grandmother pushing a cart full of groceries; a hazy image of grandpa parking a decayed Cadillac the color of worn brown leather.
Even now, as my eyes half-close on a summer evening, I can see fireflies dance through the darkness in the park at the base of the Verrazano. In a life long lost, I grasped at the flitting sparks while my grandfather sat nearby on a bench reading a newspaper in the fading light.
I'm tempted to go to their old apartment and ring the bell, but I'm afraid of who might open the door; of what might be there. In my imagination the walls are now painted black and a hunched figure sits in a corner shrouded in shadow eating burnt pieces of toast.
How can anyone ever live there? How could someone ever thrive beneath a ceiling soaked through with someone else's memories? The city is steeped in insignificant, vital histories melding with new ones like layers of paint that chip and wear thin in spots. The images of the past wavering in the umbra, lost but never gone.
For a while my grandfather had a bad habit of stumbling into the night in an Alzheimer's daze and getting lost amidst the streets. The phone would ring at 3 AM and I would hear my grandmother whisper over the open line that he's gone––the door wide open and only a stale draft blowing in his wake.
Once, in a moment of lucidity, he spoke about trying to find the old shop where his father had worked. I'm unsure if it ever existed at all. There were rumors that he labored in a toothpaste factory, screwing the caps onto the tubes. Something about that story resonated….how humble can someone be? I search for this imagined store endlessly, rewinding dreams and conversations I had with my grandfather for any clue as to where the trail might end. But it’s gone, if it ever existed, lost to time like some doomed shoe shop straddling the edge of Atlantis--ready to vanish into legend.
So tired. Battered and broken, feeling the brunt of the years like a thousand blows. Weary beyond words. Memories chase me like children from the outer boroughs. They start as shadows across the street in the park…dark outlines, barely visible against a cracking wall. Blades glint in the blackness and I watch the reflection of street lamps slide down the sides of daggers. They pull bats from folds in the night, planks of wood studded with nails to beat all my aspirations, my energy into a dull misery whose weight bows my body into a question mark of sorrow.
Flashes of memory float like those long-dead fireflies. I can remember the light. A pink glow from a sunset that settled like a rotten grapefruit over New Jersey and painted my Manhattan bedroom walls with a coral glow. Always the west side of NYC, the Hudson, and Jersey looming on the horizon like the apocalypse. Always the colors that made me weak. Pastels and diluted blues. A palette of watercolor in the sky overlooking a bedroom that fills with the colors of a drenched world I remember the dreams and my room filled with fire.
There is a monster locked in a room. More of a juggernaut that thrashes against some unseen bond. The first time that I dream of something so fantastical I can remember waking in the night and writing it all down in a frantic race against forgetfulness. Alas, some things you never forget…destined to remember the way something that can never be true makes you feel. Endless dreaming. Memories of lives lived and scenes bleached into memory that could never exist. My mind fills with the embrace of sleep and the warm wrap of opiate laced visions.
You miss it more than the real thing. A cold stream. A rotten piece of wood that twists endlessly in upon itself. I see a stream knifing through hills of pine…Pike dance beneath the glacial water. They are there; somewhere beneath…like flecks of moonlight beneath the surface. I see the white truck parked on 12th street….years and time blurred together… a world lined of sheets… daydreams and nights spent awake. Life inverted.
How could it last? When you’re in it you can’t imagine being anywhere else. Its glows only in hindsight. The days that all seem to fall in together and stretch in the wake of the hunger. The hunger. The city through the glass. An apartment in an office building. Family. But always the city. People walking by....the endless march of faces.
The four of us lived together in the West Village. In a small one-bedroom apartment edged too close to the meat markets. It was my mother, myself, her cancer and my addiction. Long, endless nights of orange sodium-vapor luminescence filtering through the blinds like some blazing inferno; the destruction of Pompeii; my whole life turned to ash...thank god she never lived to witness the extent of my ruin.
***
Joan.
I must have stared at her endlessly...all semester long...flowing blond hair and haunted green eyes. She came downtown to visit me once. The screeching A train dropped her off on 14th street and through squinted eyes I searched through the clouds of people...frantic almost...scared that the city might have taken her from me; swallowed her whole--like the infamous story of Etan Patz--vanished from the corner of Prince and W. Broadway---one of the disappeared ones we tried to forget.
She was there though...appeared through the crowded mist of faces...unmistakable against the brooding masses. I always noticed the hair and the eyes....kind of like a Medusa in reverse---stare too long and your heart will burst. Coming from the green pastures of Kentucky by way of the rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue it was surprising how she fit right into the eternal flock of clubbers, ravers, models with legs like stilts; the uncountable cool.
We couldn’t have been more different. I imagined her youth unbounded; endless stretches of green fields, horses unbridled in the distant horizon, half-vacant towns fueled by Friday night football games. As far as possible and as alien a life as I could ever imagine.
But in the hours of midnight we came together...almost like one of those hundred-year storms...an almost impossible confluence of events that resulted in twilit-fueled embraces and frantic kisses that seemed to linger unrestrained into the depths of night... I can remember kissing her in the rain--and the stench of ozone preceding a thunderstorm.
That crystalline evening when the skies grew dark and the sun dropped away below the horizon of New Jersey...storm clouds began to brew over the east-side of the city. We were hanging out the window of my apartment, her hair lashing across my face as the wind carried the smell of an approaching storm.
I did my best to coax her onto the roof beneath a threatening rain. I think she preferred the privacy of my too small room. Beneath the open sky and the endless expanse of the city, I suppose she was wary. Perhaps it was the thunder, maybe the way the clouds appeared ominous in their approach, crawling ever closer.
The black tar was still warm beneath our feet despite the rain. The August heat had soaked in deep enough that she slipped out of her flip-flops and walked over to the old water-tower barefoot, across a surface that seemed to steam as the rain hit. I can remember hesitating in the doorway...dry and safe inside the stairwell with cracking grey paint, watching as she skipped across the puddles.
I never thought I had a chance. I suppose it was the way she glanced into the distance or the slight tension I felt as her hand gripped my shoulder that changed my mind.
She stood beneath the summer showers, peeling her t-shirt off, flinging the soaked white fabric against the ground in a sloppy heap. The shards of broken glass we didn't see on the rusted steps that led up to the water tower; Her hand cut and bleeding a little too much, saying with a vampiric smirk, "Oh it's nothing...c'mere."
The way blood mixes with the taste of sweat. Rivers of red rain running down my chest. The pants I wore ruined with her red hand prints.
Through the veil of years I can still remember how her kisses tasted of blood, of sweat and thunder--how it drew something altogether new and dangerous from within us: It was dangerous love-making; haunting and frenzied and I suppose it left us both a little shaken. I sometimes think it never happened. However, through the veil of years I can never be certain. With astonishing clarity i can still feel the warmth of her skin--glowing white like some ethereal angel that crept from a dream and into my bed. But it was more than enough...our dancing beneath the quilts; kisses that burned through those frigid nights and extinguished with the coming of dawn. I can still see a hazy image of her above me in the half-darkness...blond hair scattering across and along me--even the taste of it....some things are etched forever in your mind; eyes of ocean, a laughter that rung with mirth, her shudder at my freezing hands against the curve of her breast. We did alright I suppose in that tiny cramped room--entangled as we were while outside a grey sky forever wept.
The bed in my apartment had a terrible habit of creaking; of betraying our every secret. As I recall, my mother left us alone...she was still alive then...her body ravaged by cancer...but I suppose she understood. Most probably, she wanted nothing less than to be near the too thin walls and the sound of the two of us leaking through the cracking plaster. We made love in silence--not really though--more like we fumbled feverishly beneath the reflected glare of city lights...pale luminescence filtering through the blinds...strips of light glistening across her naked body...my hands tracing across it all. The widows open, sirens blaring, the hiss of the transvestites across the street; it helped to muffle our cries. Amidst the blue glow I can still see her uncoil from the sheets; shifting ever so slightly beneath the thin streams of light; lips parted delicately; exhaled breaths like a welcoming sigh that decades later still make me shiver.
And so there was before the storm and there was after the storm. There was before that evening on the roof and there was all that came after. I suppose it changed everything. We would never again touch as gently...her fingers would clutch instead of glide; her kisses stronger and more impassioned than before--charged with electricity ever-after. Of course it was too perfect to last.
In the wake of the storm, of the pink fire that burned relentlessly through the night and into my dreams, I woke sober upon a bed of cold sweat and chill that didn't belong. It swept along the wooden floorboards and curled up the side of my bed.
In the end I never did tell her what it all meant to me....in my darkest hours of guilt I suppose her innocence intimidated me. And so I never had the chance to thank her for the myriad kisses; her sharing herself uncommittedly with someone like me...lost as I was during those years of wonder. But I will never forget. And in my deepest slumber I still wake with her taste...
Some secrets should remain kept. Locked away somewhere for all time, a memory too treasured to speak aloud, something altogether majestic. What happened that day still lingers in the back of my mind; Trapped like a caged raven, wings beating against metal; Caught tight, a tickle at the back of the throat that never eases, wanting to be told.
Some memories stand out…they scar you…one time I stumbled onto the subway and ended up sitting next to a what I thought was a woman. It was only when I met her eyes--red rimmed like freshly cut muscle that I realized my mistake. An imperfect echo of a human being who has been broken by pain beyond imagining. Looking into the blackened depths of someone's soul, into the profound depravity that the city can instill in you, I felt like a moth pinned to a card under her shattering glance. Later, years later, I came to understand. The lost children of the city. The disappeared ones.
You never expect the worst, never heed a lifetime's worth of warnings until its too late. The falling towers should have been enough of an omen. The death of my mother a few months later should have sealed the deal...but as it was I was lost to the city--too far gone, beyond repair, my life falling like a comet into the Hudson. I became a lotus-eater, satiated only by vast amounts of opiates, consumed across a wasted decade of indulgence. How hard it is coming to terms with it all, accepting your failures and honoring your defeats.
***
water.
Frankie had a pitbull––technically his uncle’s or cousin’s––some drooling and scarred mass of wrong-wired muscle whose growl was reminiscent of a netherworld beast; foul exhaled breaths of glowing orange embers, brimstone stench and all that...more than enough to put me over the edge into something just short of outright panic even before it bit me.
The night I got bit I was sitting on his couch having stumbled through the projects half-drunk, half-high, hoping to get away from my apartment and the lingering ghosts. Had I been paying more attention i would have noticed the mottled tan and black fur beside me, but as it was my mind was reeling with the death of my mother; the destruction of the towers; the memory of Joan’s hazy outline floating above me in the moonlit darkness.
So I felt more than saw the dog tense, his body tightening and coiling before it lunged through the dim, smoky light, his jaws closing across the right side of my face. I turned fast enough that he failed to grab hold, but too slow to avoid the flash of yellowed teeth that raked down my cheek drawing an uncomfortable amount of blood and a frenzy of startled shouts from across the room.
Just as fast, my friends were there, a flurry of hands grabbing the dog, a loop of bare arm pulling me into the kitchen; Lou shoving a t-shirt with the faded image of Tu-Pac, gold-toothed and smiling, against my face. He wiped at the blood frantically, mumbling, "fuck, fuck, fuck" like he was fighting against time to soak up a spilled glass of red wine before it set in and stained a set of white linens. Not that there was a single set of virgin white linen in the Marlborough projects...
I imagine he was more concerned with the idea of the cops showing up and the ensuing mad dash to hide the undealt bottles of oxycontin and Opana, the 100mcg patches of fentanyl, the endless supply of Xanax bars...stuffed into milk cartons or jammed carefully between stacks of mildewed blankets, often wedged tight between clenched buttocks. A constant running and hiding; an eternal game of cat and mouse played out against the Tactical Narcotics Taskforce.
Once it became clear I wasn't going to bleed out on the linoleum, or go into some late stages of shock, he smiled. He flung the Tu-Pac shirt into the sink, smiled crookedly, and again said, although this time with far less concern and force, "fuck."
On legs that wobbled like creaking and unsteady bamboo I rose and stumbled down the hallway towards the bathroom, grasping the edge of the doorway and turning into a scene of madness thats difficult even now to remember.
Frank and Kareem, crouched over a half-filled bathtub, muscled arms tensed with effort, drowning the heaving dog in twelve inches of brown, rust-colored water. The animal thrashed wildly, water spraying across filthy tiles and browned lines of grout...to say it was quick would be a lie. I don't know how long I stood there in stunned silence watching something akin to atrocity play out before me. I never said a word.
Frank had wanted to drag the beast out to the Marcy projects, muzzled and stuffed into the trunk of his Toyota, to be unleashed at the dog fights that supposedly raged in the abandoned basements of those crippled buildings. I imagine the thing would have done quite well, but it never quite happened. I had tried to help them find a rescue for the dog and short of that at least bring the animal to a vet so that it could be eased into oblivion, but the effort was for naught.
And then it was still. A stillness it could have never known in its short and brutal life. A pathetic waste of an existence drained away with the dirty water. My own was submerged in a muddy soup of Oxys and Xanax. I didn’t even struggle, I just sank.
***
night.
Before the city changed, before that mayor ripped the soul from something profound in both its seediness and wonder, the Meat Markets south of 14th street were rife with the Women of the Night. Their androgynous figures stretched in long ragged lines down the sidewalk. Skin walkers prowling outside as I slept. They seemed unknowable and aggressively other to me.
We all heard stories that they carried razor-blades in their locks of hair. Stare at them too long and the depth of their despair will sink into you. Nothing in the city scared me more. The packs of hoods from the depths of Bed-Stuy were nothing in comparison. I suppose there was something alien, almost sinister to the transvestites that put all sorts of fear into me.
January 10, 2016
When I get there...
Wow, I'm a lousy blogger. I haven't posted anything in ages. Well, I have but it's been on another blog of mine. Since finishing up a novel ghostwriting project early last year I've been focusing on my own writing. I'm working on a horror novel and also writing some erotica. Since I write for some publishers who do children's books and young adult I'm writing erotica under a penname, Victoria Kinkade. "Kink-aid" get it? Subliminal! Heh. I do what I can.
So anyway, I've started posting some stuff on the Victoria Kinkade blog. Though, be warned if you are so inclined to go there. It does contain excerpts from some of my erotic stories and it's somewhat spicy stuff. But mixed in with the spicy are some of my chatty ramblings and some of the inspirational stuff I love to write...and to read. I definitely enjoy self help books, good ones anyway, and spiritually uplifting writing. Sometimes things occur to me that I feel are insights and I like to share them. This is one of those.
There's a tendency in many people, myself included, to think that if we just reach a certain goal, that one point where we've "made it," either financially or career-wise or even possession-wise, that we will be living the good life. Smooth sailing from there on out.
But in truth, life is always full of ups and downs. No matter what milestones we reach we will have good times and bad times. Wanting fulfillment and waiting to get it from your accomplishments can really hold you back and even worse, leave you feeling let down when you achieve your goal and "make it." Sometimes it seems like you find a whole new level of disatisfaction waiting for you. It's happened to me a few times.
I'm not sure we are built to be satisfied. Humans are hardwired to strive and progress. It's what has made us the dominant force on the planet. You reach a goal, you celebrate, drink some champagne maybe, and feel happy and fullfilled...for a short time. But once we're "there" we still want to be better, help others, be happier. We want more.
There just doesn't seem to be a place of satisfaction waiting for us. And, here's my big realization folks, I DON'T THINK THERE SHOULD BE.
Here's why. Like most people, or at least many people, I thought the goal of life was to be happy. A few times in my life I thought I was happy. Then it all seemed to dissolve. Or get ripped away. I've tried different things with my life. Comics books, illustration, advertising, game design, even voice overs. I found that I would throw myself furiously into each vocation and strive as hard as I could to succeed. But at some point success seemed too far away and the situation just got too hard or, even worse, I would feel like I had failed at that particular profession. I'd think that it must not be my calling or that I had attached myself to someone's else's vision and it didn't work for me because it wasn't my own.
I've tried to overcome feelings of failure and sadness in many ways. None of which have worked except for one...throwing myself into a new endeavor. I think all of us get a lot more fulfillment and even contentment from conquering obstacles and being productive. I've worked hard for so many years and I've thought to myself "One of these days I'll get around to having fun." or taking a vacation. Or sometimes just taking a break. And I would feel bad. People would say to me "You'll work yourself to death. Take a break." I just didn't want to. But I would still feel guilty about not having enough "fun."
Since I've started writing every day my view has begun to shift. For one thing, lately the writing I'm doing is all my own. My ideas, my stories instead of someone else's. I've been writing and telling stories my whole life in some form. My earliest drawings had stories behind them. I started writing stories in earnest when I was about 12. I felt I had more aptitude as an artist and I focused on that most of my life, but I've never stopped writing stories, comics, screenplays and writing down ideas.
I'm finding that I enjoy writing in some profoundly satisfying ways. When I get inspired and sit down and write 3 or 4 thousand words at a sitting there's a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to it. Writing is hard. I'm still learning. I'm pretty sure I always will be. But I'm enjoying the journey, maybe even more than I'm focused on the goal. And the feeling I have of striving and keeping busy every minute turns out to be a good one if you enjoy what you do. Hard work itself isn't bad, but not enjoying your work is.
I'd love to be able to achieve some financial stability from my writing. But even if I don't I believe I'll still feel proud of my body of work and good that I am taking my shot. I know I have good stories to tell. I hope I can do them justice. But just doing what I love and doing it for myself is a worthwhile accomplishment. I'm happy with that.
So anyway, I've started posting some stuff on the Victoria Kinkade blog. Though, be warned if you are so inclined to go there. It does contain excerpts from some of my erotic stories and it's somewhat spicy stuff. But mixed in with the spicy are some of my chatty ramblings and some of the inspirational stuff I love to write...and to read. I definitely enjoy self help books, good ones anyway, and spiritually uplifting writing. Sometimes things occur to me that I feel are insights and I like to share them. This is one of those.
There's a tendency in many people, myself included, to think that if we just reach a certain goal, that one point where we've "made it," either financially or career-wise or even possession-wise, that we will be living the good life. Smooth sailing from there on out.
But in truth, life is always full of ups and downs. No matter what milestones we reach we will have good times and bad times. Wanting fulfillment and waiting to get it from your accomplishments can really hold you back and even worse, leave you feeling let down when you achieve your goal and "make it." Sometimes it seems like you find a whole new level of disatisfaction waiting for you. It's happened to me a few times.
I'm not sure we are built to be satisfied. Humans are hardwired to strive and progress. It's what has made us the dominant force on the planet. You reach a goal, you celebrate, drink some champagne maybe, and feel happy and fullfilled...for a short time. But once we're "there" we still want to be better, help others, be happier. We want more.
There just doesn't seem to be a place of satisfaction waiting for us. And, here's my big realization folks, I DON'T THINK THERE SHOULD BE.
Here's why. Like most people, or at least many people, I thought the goal of life was to be happy. A few times in my life I thought I was happy. Then it all seemed to dissolve. Or get ripped away. I've tried different things with my life. Comics books, illustration, advertising, game design, even voice overs. I found that I would throw myself furiously into each vocation and strive as hard as I could to succeed. But at some point success seemed too far away and the situation just got too hard or, even worse, I would feel like I had failed at that particular profession. I'd think that it must not be my calling or that I had attached myself to someone's else's vision and it didn't work for me because it wasn't my own.
I've tried to overcome feelings of failure and sadness in many ways. None of which have worked except for one...throwing myself into a new endeavor. I think all of us get a lot more fulfillment and even contentment from conquering obstacles and being productive. I've worked hard for so many years and I've thought to myself "One of these days I'll get around to having fun." or taking a vacation. Or sometimes just taking a break. And I would feel bad. People would say to me "You'll work yourself to death. Take a break." I just didn't want to. But I would still feel guilty about not having enough "fun."
Since I've started writing every day my view has begun to shift. For one thing, lately the writing I'm doing is all my own. My ideas, my stories instead of someone else's. I've been writing and telling stories my whole life in some form. My earliest drawings had stories behind them. I started writing stories in earnest when I was about 12. I felt I had more aptitude as an artist and I focused on that most of my life, but I've never stopped writing stories, comics, screenplays and writing down ideas.
I'm finding that I enjoy writing in some profoundly satisfying ways. When I get inspired and sit down and write 3 or 4 thousand words at a sitting there's a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to it. Writing is hard. I'm still learning. I'm pretty sure I always will be. But I'm enjoying the journey, maybe even more than I'm focused on the goal. And the feeling I have of striving and keeping busy every minute turns out to be a good one if you enjoy what you do. Hard work itself isn't bad, but not enjoying your work is.
I'd love to be able to achieve some financial stability from my writing. But even if I don't I believe I'll still feel proud of my body of work and good that I am taking my shot. I know I have good stories to tell. I hope I can do them justice. But just doing what I love and doing it for myself is a worthwhile accomplishment. I'm happy with that.
April 6, 2014
Who Is Me?
I read something today about myself. That happens on the internet, doesn’t it? And it got me thinking. Someone described me as Jim Shooter’s personal assistant. Which isn’t quite accurate, but the misconception doesn’t bother me. The label isn’t the issue, it’s really more about the thoughts the comment provoked and the paths life takes you down. Which seem to be many and varied, in my case.
Sorry, but if you’re reading this, I guess I might assume you know who Jim Shooter is, former EIC of Marvel Comics and founder of VALIANT, Defiant and Broadway Comics where I worked for him as an art director, creative director, editor, artist and writer. I’ve worked for him and helped him with his projects, off and on, for just about 30 years now. And he’s helped me with mine, too. Jim advised me when I started my own ad agency and then my design business in the 90’s, Serious Design. He taught me about the business of comics and taught me about writing. He critiqued my illustration work and my gig posters and helped me make them better. He even helped me buy my mom a house. He’s been a friend, a mentor and a demanding boss. But who am I?
I started out at a very young age with big dreams. So young that it seems like I must have been born with them. I wanted to be an artist. I also wanted to write, but as a young person I thought the two were mutually exclusive, that you had to be one or the other and I picked artist. Sort of. I pursued an illustration career while working as a graphic designer. I did this and did that, at the time it felt like I was focused on a career path and I was just being affected by circumstances. Now, looking back with the perspective that the years give you, it seems more random that it did at the time.
I feel like I was built to help. I have a drive to help people and that drive fit very nicely with what Jim Shooter needed. I can’t imagine seeing working with him as a bad thing. It has transformed my life, completely altered whatever the direction of it might have been. And it’s been cool. Is still cool. We still work together. I look forward to when I get to work with him. Interacting with Jim, everything in me needs to be sharper to keep up with his amazing intelligence and I rise to the challenge. I love being around smart people. It definitely challenges me.
I think at one time I had this idea that who you are as a person comes completely from inside you, that there is some core of truth deep inside that shapes you. And I think that’s partly true, but being around other people shapes you too. When I’ve been around people who thought badly or negatively of me in some way, I was different, much less effective, much less... me. It’s like inimical situations crush who you truly are. Suppress the best part of you. The part that should be free. And when I’ve been around positive, supportive, encouraging people, I’ve seen for myself, I am able to excel.
I’ve sometimes, maybe often, picked my companions, friends, lovers based on how I felt when I was with them. Is that weak? Or is it intelligent social behavior to acknowledge that others affect us and use that to advantage? Well, perhaps you can tell I think the latter, though I’m a type to doubt and question everything, so I do.
Not too long ago I was Jim’s “blog elf” helping him with his blog. Helping critique his writing and make suggestions. I still do that with most of his projects and he does the same with mine. That is assisting. Personally. So personal assistant might be on target. But we’re also good friends. I can’t lie, it’s great to have a friend like that. I feels good. I have a small network of smart, talented friends who's opinions I seek and their input makes my work better. Makes my life better. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but it feels right to me to be like this. And it’s incredibly rewarding to me personally to be able to help them as well.
Interdependent is sometimes viewed as a bad thing, but it’s pretty great when it works well. I think I’m lucky. Like I won the friend lottery, lucky. It’s like being a part of something good. And I get to be me (the whole kooky, silly, possibly sometimes annoying, me) around them and feel good about it. That’s a pretty great reward.
Here’s where I am today: I’m writing and drawing a graphic novel, coloring comics, doing some web comics projects and writing my first novel. Mostly. I still have some other things to work on (album art, web sites, logos) but the big ones are the steady, paying ones.
I feel like I know who I am, but that doesn’t mean it can be labeled. I have no elevator pitch for myself. When people ask me what I do, I just pause and try to think of what to tell them. I do so many different things. And I rely on my network of friends and coworkers and I do things for them, too. I work alone at home and yet I always feel interconnected. I rely on and am relied upon.
Who is me? I is us.
But if I had one thing I could say to people, it would be to get yourself around positive, encouraging people and to be one as well. Now that I’m older and feeling my mortality quite keenly, I think that life is too short to be okay with bad situations. You’ll be so much happier if you are around people that like you for who you are. And it is possible to find that. It may not be easy, but it’s possible. Being happy is good. Maybe it’s everything.
Sorry, but if you’re reading this, I guess I might assume you know who Jim Shooter is, former EIC of Marvel Comics and founder of VALIANT, Defiant and Broadway Comics where I worked for him as an art director, creative director, editor, artist and writer. I’ve worked for him and helped him with his projects, off and on, for just about 30 years now. And he’s helped me with mine, too. Jim advised me when I started my own ad agency and then my design business in the 90’s, Serious Design. He taught me about the business of comics and taught me about writing. He critiqued my illustration work and my gig posters and helped me make them better. He even helped me buy my mom a house. He’s been a friend, a mentor and a demanding boss. But who am I?
I started out at a very young age with big dreams. So young that it seems like I must have been born with them. I wanted to be an artist. I also wanted to write, but as a young person I thought the two were mutually exclusive, that you had to be one or the other and I picked artist. Sort of. I pursued an illustration career while working as a graphic designer. I did this and did that, at the time it felt like I was focused on a career path and I was just being affected by circumstances. Now, looking back with the perspective that the years give you, it seems more random that it did at the time.
I feel like I was built to help. I have a drive to help people and that drive fit very nicely with what Jim Shooter needed. I can’t imagine seeing working with him as a bad thing. It has transformed my life, completely altered whatever the direction of it might have been. And it’s been cool. Is still cool. We still work together. I look forward to when I get to work with him. Interacting with Jim, everything in me needs to be sharper to keep up with his amazing intelligence and I rise to the challenge. I love being around smart people. It definitely challenges me.
I think at one time I had this idea that who you are as a person comes completely from inside you, that there is some core of truth deep inside that shapes you. And I think that’s partly true, but being around other people shapes you too. When I’ve been around people who thought badly or negatively of me in some way, I was different, much less effective, much less... me. It’s like inimical situations crush who you truly are. Suppress the best part of you. The part that should be free. And when I’ve been around positive, supportive, encouraging people, I’ve seen for myself, I am able to excel.
I’ve sometimes, maybe often, picked my companions, friends, lovers based on how I felt when I was with them. Is that weak? Or is it intelligent social behavior to acknowledge that others affect us and use that to advantage? Well, perhaps you can tell I think the latter, though I’m a type to doubt and question everything, so I do.
Not too long ago I was Jim’s “blog elf” helping him with his blog. Helping critique his writing and make suggestions. I still do that with most of his projects and he does the same with mine. That is assisting. Personally. So personal assistant might be on target. But we’re also good friends. I can’t lie, it’s great to have a friend like that. I feels good. I have a small network of smart, talented friends who's opinions I seek and their input makes my work better. Makes my life better. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but it feels right to me to be like this. And it’s incredibly rewarding to me personally to be able to help them as well.
Interdependent is sometimes viewed as a bad thing, but it’s pretty great when it works well. I think I’m lucky. Like I won the friend lottery, lucky. It’s like being a part of something good. And I get to be me (the whole kooky, silly, possibly sometimes annoying, me) around them and feel good about it. That’s a pretty great reward.
Here’s where I am today: I’m writing and drawing a graphic novel, coloring comics, doing some web comics projects and writing my first novel. Mostly. I still have some other things to work on (album art, web sites, logos) but the big ones are the steady, paying ones.
I feel like I know who I am, but that doesn’t mean it can be labeled. I have no elevator pitch for myself. When people ask me what I do, I just pause and try to think of what to tell them. I do so many different things. And I rely on my network of friends and coworkers and I do things for them, too. I work alone at home and yet I always feel interconnected. I rely on and am relied upon.
Who is me? I is us.
But if I had one thing I could say to people, it would be to get yourself around positive, encouraging people and to be one as well. Now that I’m older and feeling my mortality quite keenly, I think that life is too short to be okay with bad situations. You’ll be so much happier if you are around people that like you for who you are. And it is possible to find that. It may not be easy, but it’s possible. Being happy is good. Maybe it’s everything.
November 22, 2013
How do you break into comics?
Every way into comics is probably different. I think each experience is also of its own time. Mine was. I was a comics fan and I used to hang out with a bunch of guys at this comic book store in Houston, Texas in the early 80s. We got to be friends and we had the creative drive so, like a lot of fans at that time, we started a fanzine, The Comic Informer. Well, I mean some of the guys started it and I joined in.
It was great fun! So many good times... We went to a sci-fi con where we interviewed James Doohan in his hotel room as he got trashed on Bell's Scotch Whiskey. For real! We tested out super hero tropes and published articles about it. We published reviews about movies, TV and comics and soon we also created comic strips and published those. It was so cool to be a part of that. I had done some illustrations for small publications, like Steve Jackson’s (no relation) The Space Gamer, and friends’ SCA newsletters, but doing logos, illustrations and especially my own one page comic strip, Fabelle, was pretty exciting at that point in my life!
I was very inspired by Jeff Jones' Idyl comic from National Lampoon.
An illustration for The Space GamerIllustration for an SCA Newsletter
A logo for a game storeAround that time we graduated from the fanzine to publishing actual comics, creating Texas Comics. One was the Elementals by our friend Bill Willingham. I colored it.
From doing The Comic Informer and doing Texas Comics it was a natural progression for us ambitious types, I suppose, to do comic book conventions as well. Thus ComixFair was born.
I was working as security person and general help at one of the conventions in 1983 where I met a number of comic book creators. I recall Jack Jaxon, Joe Rubinstein, Dave Sim and... Jim Shooter, who was soon to change my life. I met Jim on Saturday evening after the convention had closed for the day and we talked late into the night and again the next day, while I drove him to the airport. And we kept in touch a bit too, until Marvel needed someone to draw pictures of art supplies and typewriters for the Marvel Try Out Book and Jim recommended me to the art director. I had shown Jim some of my technical illustrations and he must have thought they were pretty good. So that was the seed from which my professional comics career would grow, though I didn't suspect it at the time. (See my previous blog post about my comics CV)
A front end loader illustration
Illustration for a super market
Marvel Try-Out Book IllustrationsNot too long after that, my friend Bill Willingham moved to Philadelphia to do the Elementals for Comico and needed a roommate. I happily volunteered in order to pursue my dream of becoming a book illustrator. I figured that the book publishing industry was mostly in New York, and Philadelphia was close enough to seek out opportunities there. A lot closer than Texas, anyway. So away I went. My dear friend Keith Wilson and I drove straight through without stopping to sleep from central Houston to South Street in Philadelphia because I was so paranoid about thieves targeting my UHaul truck while we slept! Poor Keith. One of the kindest and most tolerant friends I’ve ever had.
Myself, Michael Wolff and Keith Wilson in The Comic Informer
Keith and I around 1985 or so in front of Trash & Vaudeville, NYCOnce in Philadelphia I shared an art studio, Bain Sidhe Studios, with Bill, Matt Wagner of Mage fame, Bill Cucinotta, Joe Matt and others. One project we did as a studio were illustrations for a game called Aftermath.
Studio logo that I designed with input from Matt Wagner
A couple of my spot illos for Aftermath
I sought out illustration and graphic design work and fairly soon Marvel’s production manager Danny Crespi offered me a freelance job designing sell sheets for Star Comics, a division of Marvel Comics. Danny liked my work a lot and continued to offer me more for a few months until he finally offered me a full time position as a graphic designer in Marvel’s bullpen. I took the job and made the 4+ hour a day commute from Philadelphia to New York for several months before realizing that was not going to be possible for long. Denny O'Neil's assistant Don Daley and I started working at Marvel around the same time and he helped me find an apartment in Brooklyn, near where he lived.
The Star Comics logo I designedWorking as Marvel’s designer I did all sorts of projects including Marvel Age and Doctor Who (starting with issue 17) for editor Jim Salicrup, who sat near me in the Bullpen early on. Funny story... I was always pushing Jim Salicrup to let me do some illustrations for Doctor Who since I was a fan of the show, but they didn’t have the budget to have more color separations done and he wanted all color art in the book. Not one to ever be dissuaded by technical problems, I produced some fairly simple, flat color illustrations and created the separations myself by cutting Rubylith, a type of masking film, with an Xacto knife. I had to cut a unique layer, not just for each color which would have been easy, but for each different percentage of each different color. But I had done similar jobs before for budget-constricted clients. I was now officially a New York illustrator! Visions danced in my head of following in the footsteps of my heroes N. C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell.
My modest Doctor Who illustrationsLater on, when I was attending night classes at The School of Visual Arts I would show my school projects to Jim Salicrup, and based on one of my watercolor paintings for a techniques class, he asked me to paint a Stan Lee cover for Marvel Age. Well, at the time I was trying for a very photorealistic style and though he did use my painting for the cover, his criticism was that it looked like a photo instead of like a painting! I have to agree with him. (I usually do, he’s very smart.) You can see in the painting and on the cover that, except for some weird dot texture that showed up in the paper I painted on, it could be a retouched photo of Stan. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of having a painting. Oh well. Live and learn. Not the most auspicious first magazine cover, but I was proud of it anyway.
The Marvel Age cover
A scan of the actual watercolor painting
The school painting that made Jim Salicrup think I could paint a coverWhile working in Marvel's bullpen I did a lot of coloring work in the evenings. Mostly, what would happen is some frantic assistant editor would rush out into the bullpen after hours to see who was still around to assign a coloring job to at the last minute. It was usually me or Paul Becton who were still around. So, my earliest coloring assignments at Marvel were mostly due to my keeping late hours and having no life, but hey, being in the right place at the right time is okay with me. With advice from people like Jim Shooter, George Roussos, Paul Becton and Louise Simonson, among others, I learned and improved and eventually got work because I was good enough instead of just there. One of my other projects at Marvel, again from the wonderful Jim Salicrup, editor of Marvel Age, was a paper doll pinup of Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man's bride! Inked by Vinnie Coletta. Pretty fun stuff!
Me and Jim Salicrup in the 80s. He did not want a parrot on his head.
Later on I was promoted to art director of advertising in Marvel's newly created advertising department, but that’s a tale for another day. This endeth the long, shaggy story of my “break” into comics.
It was great fun! So many good times... We went to a sci-fi con where we interviewed James Doohan in his hotel room as he got trashed on Bell's Scotch Whiskey. For real! We tested out super hero tropes and published articles about it. We published reviews about movies, TV and comics and soon we also created comic strips and published those. It was so cool to be a part of that. I had done some illustrations for small publications, like Steve Jackson’s (no relation) The Space Gamer, and friends’ SCA newsletters, but doing logos, illustrations and especially my own one page comic strip, Fabelle, was pretty exciting at that point in my life!
I was very inspired by Jeff Jones' Idyl comic from National Lampoon.
An illustration for The Space GamerIllustration for an SCA Newsletter
A logo for a game storeAround that time we graduated from the fanzine to publishing actual comics, creating Texas Comics. One was the Elementals by our friend Bill Willingham. I colored it.
From doing The Comic Informer and doing Texas Comics it was a natural progression for us ambitious types, I suppose, to do comic book conventions as well. Thus ComixFair was born.
I was working as security person and general help at one of the conventions in 1983 where I met a number of comic book creators. I recall Jack Jaxon, Joe Rubinstein, Dave Sim and... Jim Shooter, who was soon to change my life. I met Jim on Saturday evening after the convention had closed for the day and we talked late into the night and again the next day, while I drove him to the airport. And we kept in touch a bit too, until Marvel needed someone to draw pictures of art supplies and typewriters for the Marvel Try Out Book and Jim recommended me to the art director. I had shown Jim some of my technical illustrations and he must have thought they were pretty good. So that was the seed from which my professional comics career would grow, though I didn't suspect it at the time. (See my previous blog post about my comics CV)
A front end loader illustration
Illustration for a super market
Marvel Try-Out Book IllustrationsNot too long after that, my friend Bill Willingham moved to Philadelphia to do the Elementals for Comico and needed a roommate. I happily volunteered in order to pursue my dream of becoming a book illustrator. I figured that the book publishing industry was mostly in New York, and Philadelphia was close enough to seek out opportunities there. A lot closer than Texas, anyway. So away I went. My dear friend Keith Wilson and I drove straight through without stopping to sleep from central Houston to South Street in Philadelphia because I was so paranoid about thieves targeting my UHaul truck while we slept! Poor Keith. One of the kindest and most tolerant friends I’ve ever had.
Myself, Michael Wolff and Keith Wilson in The Comic Informer
Keith and I around 1985 or so in front of Trash & Vaudeville, NYCOnce in Philadelphia I shared an art studio, Bain Sidhe Studios, with Bill, Matt Wagner of Mage fame, Bill Cucinotta, Joe Matt and others. One project we did as a studio were illustrations for a game called Aftermath.
Studio logo that I designed with input from Matt Wagner
A couple of my spot illos for AftermathI sought out illustration and graphic design work and fairly soon Marvel’s production manager Danny Crespi offered me a freelance job designing sell sheets for Star Comics, a division of Marvel Comics. Danny liked my work a lot and continued to offer me more for a few months until he finally offered me a full time position as a graphic designer in Marvel’s bullpen. I took the job and made the 4+ hour a day commute from Philadelphia to New York for several months before realizing that was not going to be possible for long. Denny O'Neil's assistant Don Daley and I started working at Marvel around the same time and he helped me find an apartment in Brooklyn, near where he lived.
The Star Comics logo I designedWorking as Marvel’s designer I did all sorts of projects including Marvel Age and Doctor Who (starting with issue 17) for editor Jim Salicrup, who sat near me in the Bullpen early on. Funny story... I was always pushing Jim Salicrup to let me do some illustrations for Doctor Who since I was a fan of the show, but they didn’t have the budget to have more color separations done and he wanted all color art in the book. Not one to ever be dissuaded by technical problems, I produced some fairly simple, flat color illustrations and created the separations myself by cutting Rubylith, a type of masking film, with an Xacto knife. I had to cut a unique layer, not just for each color which would have been easy, but for each different percentage of each different color. But I had done similar jobs before for budget-constricted clients. I was now officially a New York illustrator! Visions danced in my head of following in the footsteps of my heroes N. C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell.
My modest Doctor Who illustrationsLater on, when I was attending night classes at The School of Visual Arts I would show my school projects to Jim Salicrup, and based on one of my watercolor paintings for a techniques class, he asked me to paint a Stan Lee cover for Marvel Age. Well, at the time I was trying for a very photorealistic style and though he did use my painting for the cover, his criticism was that it looked like a photo instead of like a painting! I have to agree with him. (I usually do, he’s very smart.) You can see in the painting and on the cover that, except for some weird dot texture that showed up in the paper I painted on, it could be a retouched photo of Stan. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of having a painting. Oh well. Live and learn. Not the most auspicious first magazine cover, but I was proud of it anyway.
The Marvel Age cover
A scan of the actual watercolor painting
The school painting that made Jim Salicrup think I could paint a coverWhile working in Marvel's bullpen I did a lot of coloring work in the evenings. Mostly, what would happen is some frantic assistant editor would rush out into the bullpen after hours to see who was still around to assign a coloring job to at the last minute. It was usually me or Paul Becton who were still around. So, my earliest coloring assignments at Marvel were mostly due to my keeping late hours and having no life, but hey, being in the right place at the right time is okay with me. With advice from people like Jim Shooter, George Roussos, Paul Becton and Louise Simonson, among others, I learned and improved and eventually got work because I was good enough instead of just there. One of my other projects at Marvel, again from the wonderful Jim Salicrup, editor of Marvel Age, was a paper doll pinup of Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man's bride! Inked by Vinnie Coletta. Pretty fun stuff!
Me and Jim Salicrup in the 80s. He did not want a parrot on his head.Later on I was promoted to art director of advertising in Marvel's newly created advertising department, but that’s a tale for another day. This endeth the long, shaggy story of my “break” into comics.
October 18, 2013
My Comics CV
For those who don't know who I am (and I'm always a bit surprised if anyone DOES know who I am) I will post my CV. Just the comics part, though. If I included all the jobs I've had, it would start to read like a long, boring novel. Because, I'm a bit of a job slut. I've worked around. Nudge, nudge. Oh, yeah. Making resumes is a nightmare. But I've done a lot of stuff in comics, mostly working with my good friend Jim Shooter. I apologize for the ones I've accidentally left out.
Comics Career History (that I can remember)
1981-82 The Comic Informer magazine - designer, illustrator, comic strip artist
1983 Comix Fair Comic Book Convention - security
1983 The Marvel Try-Out Book - technical illustrations
1984 Bain Sidhe Studio - artist and designer
1984 Marvel Comics/Star Comics - freelance designer
1985-86 Marvel Comics - staff graphic designer/colorist
1986-88 Marvel Comics - art director of advertising
1988-89 Marvel Comics - freelance colorist and designer
1988-89 DC Comics - freelance production and design
1989-91 VALIANT Comics - artist, designer, editor, marketing, production
1991-92 Milestone Media - production consultant, colorist
1992-94 Defiant Comics - designer, editor, writer, colorist
1994-95 Broadway Video - intellectual property development
1995-96 Broadway Comics - executive editor, art director, writer, production, web designer, multimedia
1998 Daring Comics - logo designer, kibitzer
1998 Pantone - colorist (custom comic)
2003 Icon Comics - logo designer, sounding board
2004-11 Illustrated Media - freelance web design, production, colorist for custom comics
2006-08 TGS Inc - writer, developer of web comics and video game, logo designer
2007 Seven Comic Book - website design, production
2011-12 Jim Shooter.com - blog elf, admin and dogsbody
2012-13 Adam Post Media Group - designer, illustrator, letterer, writer, comic artist
2012-13 Papercutz Graphic Novels - Colorist on Ninjago & WWE, writer & artist on Stardoll
The Comic Informer issue 7. Long before computer aided design, as you can tell.
Comics Career History (that I can remember)
1981-82 The Comic Informer magazine - designer, illustrator, comic strip artist
1983 Comix Fair Comic Book Convention - security
1983 The Marvel Try-Out Book - technical illustrations
1984 Bain Sidhe Studio - artist and designer
1984 Marvel Comics/Star Comics - freelance designer
1985-86 Marvel Comics - staff graphic designer/colorist
1986-88 Marvel Comics - art director of advertising
1988-89 Marvel Comics - freelance colorist and designer
1988-89 DC Comics - freelance production and design
1989-91 VALIANT Comics - artist, designer, editor, marketing, production
1991-92 Milestone Media - production consultant, colorist
1992-94 Defiant Comics - designer, editor, writer, colorist
1994-95 Broadway Video - intellectual property development
1995-96 Broadway Comics - executive editor, art director, writer, production, web designer, multimedia
1998 Daring Comics - logo designer, kibitzer
1998 Pantone - colorist (custom comic)
2003 Icon Comics - logo designer, sounding board
2004-11 Illustrated Media - freelance web design, production, colorist for custom comics
2006-08 TGS Inc - writer, developer of web comics and video game, logo designer
2007 Seven Comic Book - website design, production
2011-12 Jim Shooter.com - blog elf, admin and dogsbody
2012-13 Adam Post Media Group - designer, illustrator, letterer, writer, comic artist
2012-13 Papercutz Graphic Novels - Colorist on Ninjago & WWE, writer & artist on Stardoll
The Comic Informer issue 7. Long before computer aided design, as you can tell. Statement of Intent to Reminisce
Ahh, I remember it like it was a while ago. Those heady days of creation at VALIANT Comics. From 1989 to 1991 our small team of people created comic books. We did pretty much everything ourselves, right in the office, working in a big, open loft space. Mostly to save time. We didn't have to get up and walk from office to office, we could just talk to the people across the room. See what they were doing. Show each other stuff. The artists could hear the stories being discussed as they were plotted and written. The art was (mostly) drawn, inked, lettered and colored right next to each other, making it easier to coordinate the look. Logos were designed and ads were created on the spot with input from all. We took most of our meals in the conference room. Usually while someone played Nintendo. We scavenged office furniture from the street. We worked all hours until our brains were smushy. There may have occasionally been drool.
But we were in love. With comic books. That kept us going on many long, cold, vermin ridden nights. (That first VALIANT office had quite a mouse problem. Also a break-in problem, heating problem, air conditioning problem, electricity problem and dust problem.) Were we crazy? Oh yeah.
VALIANT might have been the most significant, but it wasn't my first comics start-up and it wasn't my last. In fact I've had a kind of career doing start-ups and I'm still at it today. I mean to blog about some of that stuff. Old and new. The Comic Informer Fanzine. Texas Comics and the first issue of The Elementals. Comico. Marvel and DC Comics in the 80s. VALIANT, Defiant and Broadway Comics. Milestone Comics. Icon Comics (hidden secrets!), Daring Comics (more hidden secrets!), and more recently working on Stardoll for Papercutz and working with Adam Post as well as self-publishing.
Hmm. This may take a while. I think I'll catch a nap. Have a picture:
Jade Moede and me on Jade Appreciation Day at VALIANT. Art Nichols is adorably distressed in the background.
But we were in love. With comic books. That kept us going on many long, cold, vermin ridden nights. (That first VALIANT office had quite a mouse problem. Also a break-in problem, heating problem, air conditioning problem, electricity problem and dust problem.) Were we crazy? Oh yeah.
VALIANT might have been the most significant, but it wasn't my first comics start-up and it wasn't my last. In fact I've had a kind of career doing start-ups and I'm still at it today. I mean to blog about some of that stuff. Old and new. The Comic Informer Fanzine. Texas Comics and the first issue of The Elementals. Comico. Marvel and DC Comics in the 80s. VALIANT, Defiant and Broadway Comics. Milestone Comics. Icon Comics (hidden secrets!), Daring Comics (more hidden secrets!), and more recently working on Stardoll for Papercutz and working with Adam Post as well as self-publishing.
Hmm. This may take a while. I think I'll catch a nap. Have a picture:
Jade Moede and me on Jade Appreciation Day at VALIANT. Art Nichols is adorably distressed in the background.
