MR. EWOK ONE
Comic books have always been a priceless source of inspiration since my childhood. In the early 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, sitting 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 gift and gesture, I probably didn’t even know or even realized 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-Mens, Doctor Stranges, Amazing Spidermans, X-Factors etc, and I would assume where things Marvel would send him afterward. These comic pages soon became a place of escape, my imagination as a child was truly something extraordinary, I could turn off the world in an instant and be somewhere else, imagining block buster movies unfolding right in front of me. Losing track of time was nothing to me, while falling into the pages of comics, I was hooked! These gifted comics would also become my first art teacher, showing me how to draw what I thought were really cool action scenes, where my own superheroes would blast bolts of energy out of their fingertips, or punch the heads off of their foes.
My pull towards art and to one day become a real artist had begun as far back as I can remember, but this particular injection of colorful storytelling in Dan’s gift, was one of my first real loves of art and memories I will cherish forever. There was just something perfect about the primitive newsprint grittiness of 80’s comics for me, in my opinion lost in today’s comic medium.
Around the age of 10 or 11, I would mow lawns, and had a newspaper route for a brief time, to feed my comic addiction. Around 1990 I was 14 yrs. old, the perfect age to witness the rise of the new school super star artists who eventually left MARVEL to create the powerhouse company known as IMAGE. These guys were at the height of their careers. I was in my glory picking up all of the new titles and one day imagined my own art being as awesome as Todd McFarlane, or Jim Lee, or maybe I could be as cool as Rob Liefeld was on the Spike Lee Button Your Fly commercial. I would draw until my fingers hurt.
Somewhere around 14, my mom signed me up to a comic book drawing course on Saturday mornings in New Paltz, taught by Paul Abrams , who was also a comic artist who lived in the Hudson Valley. Looking back now, and as much as I loved comics, pulling the curtain away and learning things as he was explaining, something began to feel off to me. I was doing my best to draw in the ways of the commercial comic illustrators of that era. This is not a slight to Paul and his curriculum in any way, Paul was an amazing teacher, but I think the industry look of perfect anatomy and structure at the time, for me just felt very stiff and boring. The rebellious ‘teenage me’ just couldn’t relate to how polished Captain America or Superman was, that stuff felt boring to me. Sadly, I was beginning to realize that the majority of artists working in the industry had a look that I was going to have to conform to if I was to ever play ball and fit in. This commercial style of drawing I was being pushed toward was clashing head on with my own internal creative rebellions. 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 already established in the industry but their approach tended to be a bit more skewed and I naturally gravitated toward them for different reasons. All celebrated highly now for being unique, I can only imagine they were probably treated like new school punks in their time, not conforming to what the rest of the old guard in the industry were doing. 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 at the time just gravitated toward these weird new 90’s guys.
Injecting around this time, falling head over heels in love with Graffiti, Skateboarding, Hip Hop Music, Punk Music, and regularly getting into fights in school and in the street as one of the few skaters in my hometown at the time, getting chased or having to stand my ground and fight was no stranger to me. Sprinkle in some good ol’ fashion family disruption, 3 police arrests by age 16 or 17 and mentally I was all over the place. Looking back, I honestly don’t think my head was ready to sit down and be disciplined enough to get my act together to become a comic artist. I was way too immature to even sit still for more than 5 minutes without getting bored. As it would happen, my life and artistic plans were off in a different direction after High School anyways. My portfolio was accepted at a Pratt portfolio review day, and I would go on to be trained in traditional finger roll style animation drawing, the main take away from this was learning the ability to do very fast gesture drawing. At the exact same time I was living a double life developing a secret Graffiti persona within the amazing backdrop of downtown Brooklyn in the mid 1990’s. Fast forward 30 years, and I’ve been flown around the world many times over on the successes of my Graffiti passion and my Fine Art painting. Ongoing still today, is my answer to anyone asking me why I still choose to not show my face in photos. This concept has been my M.O. for decades, as to where an artist like Banksy pops up and becomes a house hold name, everyone thinks he’s just being “mysterious”. speaking for myself, it was never part of a sales pitch to be faceless, the name and recognition I made for myself within this secretive community, came specifically from an illegal lifestyle of mostly un sanctioned art around the 5 boroughs, where I was to live and coexist within a completely different set of rules, or I wouldn’t have survived a year in that world, and I’ve seen many come and go due to not understanding these survival skills.
Wrapping this up in a pretty bow, I’m in my 40’s now loving installment after installment of all of these blockbuster Comic themed Movies that have dominated the film industry over the last 15 years. I was very fortunate to even get to go see the first Doctor Strange film with Dan Green when it was in theaters. Dan had a very big part in shaping the Doctor Strange image in the 1980’s with his stand alone painted classic Graphic Novel, “Into Shamballa” written by J.M. Dematteis. Through many of these different experiences, life has proven to be a wild ride so far. Everything seems to be coming full circle one way or another. Since the Covid lockdown, I’ve yet again fallen in love with comic books, meeting and talking shop with many of my long time heroes, and now illustrating my own creations. I’ve even sought after and accumulated a plethora of original comic art from the people that originally sparked my interests in my youth. When I was old enough and financially able, I made sure to try to hunt down these artists and try to own something from them, while they are alive. This has been an important mission to me. Maybe at some point I’ll put up a “Collection” section on here to showcase that art.
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, that maybe at the time wasn’t ready for an artist like me. I hope I can inspire new generations of young artists out there feverishly doodling, who may themselves be the outcasts in their own life story. I want to show by example, anything is possible through art. To see my Fine Art or Graffiti Art, you can find those in the links section.