"He gave up a job...": Chapter 3

From middle school through high school I read -- and bought -- more comics. I drew copies of my favorite covers; I designed characters and costumes and took a cartooning/comics class here and there.
But it was all on the periphery, off in the background. I was being steered to "serious writing" now. My dad gave me "Blame Me on History," the scathing anti-apartheid autobiography of a South-African writer/journalist named Bloke Modisane. See any message in that?

My journalistic tendencies were coming to the front. I nagged our neighbor Mark to let me be an intern at the Pittsburgh Courier. I wrote for a couple of school newspapers. I also voraciously kept a journal, chronicling the events of the day and my feelings about them. And now, I wrote short stories, not comics, about my crew's adventures -- going to parties, hanging in Oakland, fights/near fights, various episodes with the police, etc.

When it was time to go to college, I applied to the journalism schools at Ohio State and Northwestern. Didn't get in, but got accepted at Oberlin, go figure... For grad school, however, I majored in print journalism at Boston University. With my French degree from O.C., it seemed I was moving along on my path as an international journalist/correspondent.

Eventually even my drawing fell into the margins of my notebooks. Comics and art became a hobby, not a serious venture. A word processor crash in 1993 that wiped out my drafts/outlines for my Universe Comics characters seemed to be a sign to finally end my comics creating dreams.

"He gave up a job...": Chapter 2

What I was reading became what I wrote. Initially, I wanted to be a mystery writer. Why? 'Cause Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys were my favorite books to read. By the fifth grade I had written several Brown mysteries, come up with my own boy detective, and created Idom the Wonder Worm, who solved mysteries (and looked a lot like Richard Scary's worm character wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat).
Notice the inclusion of "wonder" in the title, a very comic-bookish term. Comic books still had a hold on me. So, it's no shock that my first original comic book superhero team was a group of super powered crime solvers, not necessarily crime fighters, called…The Detecters. Hey, I was young, subtlety was not my forte.
The Detecters remained largely character profiles until the seventh grade when my crew and I decided to do our own comic: we’d write it, draw it, mimeograph it at school – yes, I said mimeo not copy machine; our teachers even gave us some of the carbon paper to draw on – and sell it to our classmates. The selling idea quickly went by the way side and I didn't complete my section in time for the "press run." But going through the process and having a real-life book at the end of it, made the idea of creating comics as real for me as writing the next-great mystery novel. The seeds for the "Modi Comics Group" had been planted, but their germination period would be a long one -- like 9 years.

He gave up a job with benefits for this?????

Surprisingly enough, folks have asked to hear more about me: specifically, why comics?

It's a fair question because I've wanted to be a writer since childhood and my interests included fiction and newspapers as far as I can remember. So, having a degree in journalism and working at the largest newspaper in the Vermont, would seem to indicate that I had achieved my goal.

Not entirely. "Comic-Man," my alter ego, was begging to be free.

Sometime early on, I decided to start illustrating my ideas, either as standalone drawings or as a comics. I can't remember what made me start drawing. I can, however, remember some of the earliest things I drew: Underdog, Mighty Mouse, my own Peanuts comic strips and Spider-Man, usually just his webbed-head.

Obviously, I was enamored with cartoons, but it was comics that bridged my two loves. Three loves, actually, as comics also fostered my passion for reading.

It began with an issue of Superman. It was a story about a guy who was able to beat Supes because of a watch he had. I had to be pretty young, -- 4 1/2 - 5 years old -- because my comprehension didn’t pick up on the fact that the guy had kryptonite in the watch. "Ma," I remember saying, "I want to get more of these." "OK, learn to read," she answered. And it was on. (At right: The first comic book I "read." )

And finally, without the thunderbolt...

So, you're asking, "what has he been doing since the origin of this blog 10 months ago?" Well, I'd like to say that I was working on writing, drawing and publishing my first complete comic book.

And I can.

What you have here is the cover for "Punk" Issue #0 -- my first comic series. Published under the banner of Danger Zone, "Punk" is slated to be a 12-issue book. Issue #0 was my final project for my first year at CCS (Center for Cartoon Studies). And big ups to Sante for the sweet back cover ad!!

Stay tuned for updates on when and where the entire book will be available and/or how to get copies. How's that for a cliffhanger ending?