I plunged into this graphic novel at 15 years old, setting out to create the best Abominable Snowman story ever told, direct a horror movie on paper (with no adult relationship experience), and play with a different storytelling format. Did all comic book pages have to have the same kind of panel layouts? I didn't think so. I still don't.
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This was the third and last Lensman run I drew for Eternity comics, in which we merged the movie adaptation into the TV anime series and took off in a new direction. The biggest question going in was if it would last long enough to cover all 25 episodes. How far did we get? Spoiler: a lot less than 25. See every issue here!
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Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) started out in 1980 with some original game properties, then scored a home run two years later when they became the first company to license a Middle Earth RPG. They added a well-regarded miniatures battle game called Silent Death in 1990. That set the stage for me to cross their path and illustrate this expansion book.
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This was my third outing with our friendly neighborhood wall crawler. My involvement in this series was more significant than the first two; it pushed me through a technological turning point and into Marvel Animation Studio for almost ten years. Fun was had along the way, but also a LOT of pain. Read all about it here.
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When I decided to put some of my earliest works on a website for public view, I knew it would be like disclosing my high school yearbook photos. And now that becomes literally true. The Vantage Point was our school newspaper, and I contributed to it with almost no oversight for two years, which was utter madness. Here's a sample of what happened.
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If you're like me (and I know I am), you watch every astronaut movie you can get your hands on, and afterward you think, "I wish someone could give us a version of that that lasts longer than two hours." I've got good news for you: a Japanese fella named Chuya Koyama has been doing exactly that since 2007. And he's still at it as I write this.
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This was a huge, sprawling adventure story with fun, diverse characters thrown together in a chase-quest. It would have all the things that make a kid say "aw, cool": heroes, aliens, monsters, spaceships, battles, robots, and dinosaurs. The kind of story 15-year-old-me would devour. There weren't enough of them around to satisfy me, so (as usual) I had to make my own.
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This right here is the number one reason I wanted to set up ArtValt. There are lots of things from my personal archives nobody else saw until I shared them here, but this one is exceptional: the climax and finale of my first original comic book title. It was shocking and thrilling to feel it rush through me onto the page. It was the reward for my dedication.
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Here's another job that came out of the blue one day. I don't remember how I got it; maybe I contacted Steve Jackson Games, maybe they contacted me. Either way, I got a chance to contribute to one of the most long-lived and enduring role-playing games ever made.
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There were six different Spider-Man cartoons over a stretch of almost twenty years, and I can proudly state that I am the only individual artist who worked on all of them. This is the story of my second outing. Easing into the show was like putting on well-worn shoes. I was back with Peter, Harry, and the rest after parting with them five years earlier.
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I've handled some unusual projects in my time. I've taken a few meetings that would qualify as weird. But this one went to a wild frontier unmatched by the others. It was to be a live theater experience; a musical founded on psychological concepts that would probe different parts of the mind, turning them into a visual feast. My long history of reading and drawing comic books prepared me for anything, it seemed.
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Lupin III first made the scene in 1967, two years after I was born. My first Lupin exposure was the 1978 feature film The Mystery of Mamo, followed by the sublime Castle of Cagliostro. Those twin punches made me a fan for life, and sleuthing out the latest treasures kinda makes you feel like the groovy guy himself.
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Luke Skywalker vs. Boba Fett in a race to find a lost city! My second full-length Star Wars graphic novel, made when I was a high school Sophomore. And it represented a pretty big turning point, due entirely to me getting some actual hands-on education.
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Though his capabilities have been elevated, Aaron Broid still can't make a decisive move even with his enemy finally in sight. But in a moment of weakness, he gives in to his impulses. This decision puts him on a collision course with his own lost past. That collision is the shatterpoint that the entire story has been building toward. Nothing will be the same afterward.
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This volume from West End Games had quite a prophetic title. It was the end of a 4-book campaign for them and the end of a career phase for me. I had just gotten my beak wet in the TV animation world, and freelance illustration work was on the way out. This wasn't just my last Star Wars assignment (of 12) for West End, it was my last Star Wars project of any kind.
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This was the first of many Spider-Man cartoons I got to work on. It was also the first in CG, the first in widescreen, the first to follow the blockbuster 2002 movie, and the first to be brought to a complete standstill by executive infighting. Here you'll find tons of storyboards, complete animatics, designs, and a crazypants production story.
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Reagan. Gorbachev. Marcos. Qaddafi. These were the news leaders back when I officially entered adulthood, and I spent that time turning them into cartoons for a weekly Michigan newspaper. No matter when you become of aware of them, politics are never new. Just sometimes easier to make fun of.
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In the parallel fields of comics and animation, there's a dictum that applies equally to both: you reach the pinnacle of success as a storyteller when your story can be clearly followed via pictures alone. This also applies to a story that can be clearly followed despite a language barrier. Blue Meteor SPT Layzner is that kind of story.
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After a gap of almost two years, I returned to the space heroes I didn't know were inspired by anime robots and threw everything I had against them in two brain-shattering comic book epics that shook the universe! Don't worry if you missed them, they've been waiting for you to catch up ever since!
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We begin this issue with a changing of the guard on the enemy side. When the effect of this hits our rebel group head on, help comes from an unexpected source and a major step forward is taken on the path to the shatterpoint. In the real world, it was June 1990 and my first few comics were in stores, so I should have been flying high. Instead, I was working harder than ever.
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