MR. EWOK ONE
Comic books have been a priceless source of inspiration since childhood. In the 80’s around age 6 or 7, it began with a loose pile of about 25 comics given to me by a then seasoned Marvel Artist/Inker Dan Green. Dan was a friend of my mother, a hard working single mom who at the time was putting herself through school and bartending part time at a pub style restaurant in upstate New York called Schneller’s. Dan’s art studio was about a block away. After work most days Dan would come into Schneller’s for a drink, often times due to mom not able to afford a sitter, you could find a miniature version of me keeping myself entertained by scribbling up a storm at the end of the bar. It all feels surreal now thinking back, and of course I hadn’t yet realized the importance of Dan’s gifts. I probably didn’t even know what a comic book was yet, or for that matter what Dan’s part was in any of what he gave me. If you can imagine a stack of comics wrapped in a string with a shoe lace tie on the top… this was his gift.. In this little stack of X-Men, Doctor Strange, Amazing Spiderman, X-Factor etc, I know now these where just things Marvel would send Dan afterward.
These comic pages soon became my place to escape, my imagination as a child was truly something else looking back. I could turn off the world and in an instant be somewhere else, imagining block buster movies unfolding right in front of me in those stories. These comics would also become my first art teacher, showing me how to draw what I thought were really cool action scenes, my own superheroes would blast bolts of energy out of their fingertips, or a punch I would draw, would send the head flying off a foe.
My pull towards art begun as far back as I can remember now, but this particular injection of colorful storytelling in Dan’s gifts, was my first real love for art. This among other memories of Dan being around when I was a curious kid will be memories I will cherish forever.
Around the age of 10 or 11, I started mowing lawns and had a paper route to feed my comic addiction. Around 1990 I was 14, the perfect age to witness the rise of some super star artists who eventually leave MARVEL to create IMAGE. ( we all know the story ) These guys were at the height of their careers and I was in my glory picking up all of the new titles, one day imagining my own art being as good as Todd McFarlane, or Jim Lee, and maybe one day I could be as cool as Rob Liefeld was in the Button Your Fly commercial. I would draw endlessly back then until my fingers hurt.
Somewhere around 14, I got signed up for a comic book drawing course on Saturday mornings in New Paltz, NY taught by Paul Abrams, a comic artist who lived upstate. Looking back now, and learning things as he was explaining, something began to feel off to me about having to draw a certain way. I was doing my best to form a commercial comic style of that era. This is not a slight to Paul in any way, Paul was an amazing teacher, but I think the industry had a look of perfect anatomy and structure at the time, that for me just felt stiff and boring when I tried it. That rebellious ‘teenage me’ just couldn’t relate to how polished Captain America or Superman was supposed to look if I ever expected to get a job in the industry. Sadly, I was beginning to realize that the majority of artists working had a look that I would have to conform to if I was to ever play ball, or fit in. I felt this way up until I discovered artists like Simon Bisley, Bill Sienkiewicz, Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Bart Sears, Sam Keith, Eric Larsen, Art Adams etc. These guys were established in the industry but their approach tended to be a bit more skewed or cartoony, so I naturally gravitated toward them as a fan. Not to throw shade at the greats like Frazetta, Kirby, Byrne, Perez, etc. All of whom I fell in love with later for different reasons, but this angsty teen in me just gravitated toward the weird when it came to the 90’s guys.
Around this time, I discovered and got obsessed with the mystique of Graffiti, Skateboarding, Hip Hop, Punk bands, and regularly getting into fights at school as one of the few skaters in my hometown, that was primarily made up of preps, jocks or metalheads at the time. Sprinkle in some good ol’ fashion family disruption, 3 police arrests by age 17, and realistically I was probably a pain in the a** to try to teach anything to. Looking back, my head wasn’t ready to sit down and be disciplined enough to do anything. As it would happen, my life and artistic plans were off in a different direction after High School anyways. My portfolio was accepted in the cafeteria at a Pratt portfolio review day, and I would go on to study traditional finger roll style animation from ‘96-2000, where the main take away was learning to do very fast gesture drawings of anything. At the exact same time I was also living a double life as a Graffiti writer for these last 4 years of the 90’s in Brooklyn. Fast forward 30 years, and I’ve been flown around the world endlessly over the successes of my Graffiti and Fine Art painting.
As a comic fan, now in my 40’s, getting to see the success of the Marvel Movies franchise for the last 15 years or so, I was fortunate to get to go see the first Doctor Strange film with Dan Green when it was in came out. Dan had a very big part in Doctor Strange’s history, working on the series as well as eventually doing his stand alone painted Graphic Novel, “Into Shamballa” written by J.M. Dematteis which I highly recommend if you’re not already familiar with this masterpiece.
Since the Covid lockdown, like so many others, I’ve found my way back to a love of comics again, meeting and talking shop with many of my long time heroes, searching out podcasts and illustrating my own creations.
So here we are, this website was created to share my ongoing comic journey with the world, the works within will be an ever evolving portfolio with the goal to to offer my own work back into an industry that was so pivotal to making me who I am today.
To see more of my other art passions mentioned in this bio, you can find websites dedicated to each in the links section on the home page.