One day I got a call from someone in the promotional department of Paramount Pictures asking if I could come in and talk about doing the art for a Phantom promo project, which was a pretty good gig for someone like me. Movies come and go, but a job like this comes only once.

After my first year as a professional comic book artist, I decided to gather up my advice and experience into an essay. Of course, it would be quite a different presentation today after thirty years of added experience, but the basics are still sound and it makes for an interesting time capsule from the pre-internet world.

The year 1986 was a huge turning point for me, the root of which was a yearly Science-Fiction convention called Babel Con. Here's what happened the year someone thought it would be a good idea to put me in charge of it.