MY ORIGIN STORY!
As a nerdy, child of the ’70s and 80’s, comic books were my first love. (then came television, movies and rock ‘n roll.) But during those powerful and formative years, all I wanted to do was grow up and draw for Marvel Comics. DC wouldn’t have been a bad fallback position, but it was the Mighty Marvel that captured my young and exploding imagination.
I was consumed with drawing and telling stories from the time I was two-years-old. Drawing action-packed WWII battle scenes between our brave soldiers and the Germans and Japanese. To the horrific Universal Monsters terrorizing poor, unsuspecting damsels in distress.
But, when I hit elementary school, I discovered superheroes. And it was all over, after that.
I read all the comics I could. My mom would give me a dollar allowance each week and on Fridays, (when she would go to my family’s business to do the accounting, I would go down to Shoales Drugstore and gaze at the four-colored mythologies playing out on the newsprint pages of the Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Conan the Barbarian and so many more.
When I first started buying comics they cost 25 cents a piece. I would turn that spinner rack over and over again, wrestling with the difficult decision of which four comics I would buy that week?
I really have to give my mother so much credit for supporting all of my artistic passions. Comic books and drawing was her favorites I believe. For my birthday, she took me to Empire Comics in Rochester and bought me How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way, by Stan Lee and my favorite artist at the time, John Buscema. I was lost in a whole other world.
I still have this book and the VHS tape to go along with it. It truly changed my life.
My addiction to comics wained during the mid-eighties. I got into playing music in bands, graduated high school and just got lost for a while. My love for comics never fades, I stopped collecting mostly. But my interest stayed with me.
After a short stint at a local community college, where I took some English and creative writing classes, that showed me I had writing potential, I dropped out and went back to normal crap jobs. (looking back, I suppose once again, I was afraid of failure and possible success.)
Then the love for drawing and comics came back and I was once again, BLAM-O! Back into the panel and guttered world of comics.
I even applied to and go accepted into the extremely powerful Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Arts, in Dover, New Jersey in 1990-91. But was unable to attend, because I was a young-married father with a 3-year-old daughter. But, I was proud of being accepted into such an amazing program. And, I do regret not going there. But…ah, such is life, right?
*I will add, the trip with my late brother, Brian, down to the school for my portfolio interview was a fun and hectic memory I’ll never forget. I will tell you about another time.)
So, more life changes occurred. I got divorced, moved back home with my folks and got a job at Wal-Mart of all places. worked and worked on my drawing as I moved in with two of my closest friends. I still had dreams of working in comics, even at twenty-five.
I met an amazing girl, who also loved the arts and encouraged me to keep pursuing my dream of being the next Jack Kirby, John Byrne (and a new artist hero, Bart Sears.)
We attended Syracuse Comic-Con in the late winter of 1993 because one of my favorite artists, Bart Sears, was going to be there. He was drawing DC’s Justice League Europe at the time and I had to meet him.
Wizard Magazine was holding a drawing contest at the time, and Bart was also working with Wizard on his Brutes & Babes, How-to-draw articles, and I was drawing a full Hulk page and wanted his opinion. Plus, I loved his art style and hadn’t been to a comic book convention since high school.
So, I finally got to meet Bart and we chatted a bit. I showed him my artwork and he gave me some very useful tips and advice. He was (and still is) a great guy and super friendly and generous with his time. (Check his work out here.)
Also: check out Ominous Press as well.
So, needless to say, I was uber-charged up after meeting Bart and the convention as a whole.
But, I tended to do for most of my life at that point, time passed and my attention was drawn elsewhere. The big glut of money in the comic industry, with the formation of Image comics and the shitty and greedy business model Marvel started and Image, perfected, with multiple covers and gimmick covers and such turned me off. So, my comic book dreams took a back seat to try to live life and other things.
Years pass, and I toyed with a graphic novel idea I had from my superhero role-playing game days. I even discovered a great website resource for comic creators and hooked up with a writer and we actually got a script going, but then I went back to college, worked full-time, had my daughter and amazing fiance and little time for comic stuff.
More time passes and it’s now 2019 and I am finally back into comic books and my graphic novel script, as well as a bunch of other cool ideas.
And, to illustrate how life does indeed come full-circle, I have come back in contact with Bart Sears and have had some great conversations about drawing, the business and everything in between. (I guess there are some positives to social media after all.)
Funny how life works out.
So, this is what OLD SCHOOL COMIC BOOK COMPANY is all about and why it exists after all these forty-odd-years later. I guess you can run from something for only so long. But, I am damn happy to have been caught.
Drawing has been part of my life as long as I can remember. I gave up on it, even after getting a Master’s degree in art education. But thank the gods, it never gave up on me.
I am beyond excited to see where it takes me in the oncoming years. I hope you stick around and take the journey with me.
Please check out my project pages and you will be able to purchase the digital and print versions of all OSC books as they come out straight from my site.
I will probably be setting up a separate newsletter for OSC from my fiction writing, so if you are only interested in comics, you get only that groovy info.
Thanks for sticking with my long mumbling, and I appreciate all of your support and interested in all things Erb.
All the best, and read and ROCK ON!
-THOM