Monday, June 16, 2014

2002: Wolverine in Paris mail-in submission

After my Daredevil sample, I decided to draw a Wolverine sample. Not sure why I picked Paris, but it seemed like an exotic spot for a comic sample. I also like the old style, but cutting edge at the time, zip drive. I was trying to find my 'style' and I think these pages showed a lot of Frank Quietly influence on what I was doing. I don't remember how response was, but I know I got a response from a new to Marvel Assistant editor who went by the initials C.B.

2002: Daredevil vs Kingpin mail-in

At some point it became obvious to me the Acid Jaxx comic wasn't going to become at real thing and I had pretty much given up on getting the 3d animation job so I resolved to turn my attention back to drawing submissions. I didn't really have access to any scripts, so I modified the Spider-Man script I used for San Diego and drew this. I tried to follow the advice I had been given in San Diego. For example, I started collecting books on New York City and used that as reference. Also, I specifically remember Mark Chiarello (of DC Comics) telling me to show more 'height' in the last panel, so you got sense of the danger. So I tried to do that. I don't remember how the response was to this sample. I know at the time I'd send out 50 -60 sample packets and get back 7 or 8 responses. But the real important thing about this sample was I got back in the habit of producing work.

Friday, June 6, 2014

2001/2002: I got my first paying job Acid Jaxx!!

I guess the tryout went well because sometime in the fall of 2001 I was offered the job drawing Acid Jaxx, starting with issue #2. It was awesome, my first paying comic job! I was excited! The only problem was the writer didn't have the whole script written. He was sending me several pages a month.

In the end, the project ground to a halt and I stopped getting script pages and he stopped answering my email. I think he last email to me was something like. "I would never bail on an artist. I am having trouble finding an inker. I will contact you with the inkers address soon." And I never heard back.

However, there is more to this story and later on Acid Jaxx will resurface.

These are all the pages I could find, but I think there may have been a few more. At the pace we were working this kept me busy fall/winter of 2001 and 2002.